I wanted a rest day...got it today...Making up Kelly in the morning.

I'm behind schedule so I'll be doing Tabata something else from a couple weeks ago plus a Deadlift work-out.

hey guys..
was going to see if i could get some advice..i know this week wednesday was a rest day..which i did that..than thursday i didnt know how to do 1 set thrusters so i opted to rest again..friday i did the muscle ups and saturday i did "kelly"..i dont want to have 3 rest days this week..so what would be a good alternative for a missed workout...suggestions?

Happy rest day people

Daniel - practice a weakness. pick a workout with one of your weaknesses and hit it

Looks like Lauren needs somme solid coaching from BMack so she can run safely. Horrific form.

Run Cert:

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, June 13th-14th 2009

ahhh! much needed! :)

Sunday musings (from the sick bed)...

1) The key to indecision is flexibility...

2) Imposter. "Lovely Daughter" is way into Britain's Got Talent (her BF lives in London). There's a guy on the judges panel sitting on the right as we look at the stage who looks just like Simon Cowell. Can't be him, though. This guy is kind and seems to have feelings.

Who is this man and what has he done with Simon Cowell?

3) Automatic watches. Chez bingo we love watches, especially automatic watches. You know, the ones that you never have to wind as long as you wear them. They have these cool mechanical stuff inside that you can't see that winds the watch when you move your arm. And they last forever. They just keep on working. It's really amazing.

It's kinda like Crossfit, or the effect that Crossfit has on our bodies; on everything, really. I have an automatic watch that was made in 1953. For the record, I was "made" in 1960, so my watch is 7 years older than I. It's not very current from a fashion standpoint, but it looks rather OK really, especially for its age. And it works beautifully, keeping very sharp, accurate time after all of these years.

Hmm...not very fashionable, but not too bad looking. Works pretty well, especially given its age. Sounds like ME on Crossfit!

4) Wake. Another wake. I went to a wake for another friend's parent on Friday. Brilliant obit in the PD, by the way. Full of life, a vibrant pulsing description of his mother in all of her flamboyant youthful self under her picture as a young woman. It was interesting...not a single picture or video or memory trigger was present at the wake. Everyone was filled with their own memories of this very memorable woman.

How cool! An unspoken reminder that the organic memories, the memories that are imprinted in our minds, printed on our souls are so much more important, so much more special than any snapshot or video or slideshow. A reminder that we should be concerned with making memories while our memorable people are still around to share in the making. The album that we keep in our heart is so much more vibrant and alive than any amount of RAM could ever be.

How much richer we are...how much fuller are our lives when, rather than things, we collect experiences. When we collect memories. Memories gathered with the people we wish to remember.

I'll see you next week...

Musings in the filter...

Why post political links on a fitness website? This is a good way to create more disconnection.

***FRAT***

Hey gang, I'm back!

This fact is obvious to most of you here, but just in case you haven't realized it by now...Crossfit is powerful tonic...and it works.

Case in point: I do a round trip Yosemite Half Dome hike every year. We start from the valley floor and hike a total of 15 miles with an elevation gain of approximately 5,000 ft. The top of the dome is 8,800 ft above sea level. It's long, it's steep and it's brutal.

On Friday I made my fifth ascent...check out the numbers compared to last year:

2008: 12:47:00 (That's 12 hours and 47 minutes)

2009: 9:15:23 (PR)

The faster time however is not what I find most remarkable, but rather the speed at which my body recovered. In past years, the hike has been followed by literally days of being nearly incapacitated by muscle pain and joint stiffness in my knees. This year was different.

The day after the hike, I got up to teach my Saturday class fully expecting to be in agony as usual. To my surprise...no pain! In fact, I was able to do some squats and then even joined my class in doing 100 meters of walking lunges!

Thank you Coach and Lauren for sharing this amazing strength and conditioning program with the world, it truly has changed my life...and I'm just getting warmed up :-)

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but I wanted to share this with all of you, my Crossfit family.

***END FRAT***

~Never Quit!

Bingo: Beautiful.

Cookie: Thanks for the email to Mrs. PB&J, that was awesome :-)

Herm: Congrats on the shoulder progress milestone...guess I can't call you the one armed bandit anymore.

Cougar Hunter: A C2 and a GHD now too? Dude I can't keep up! :-)

Just watched the atomic bomb video which caught my eye particularly because I am a nuclear engineer. Jon Stewart is an absolute moron for saying that the use of the atomic bombs was a war crime and that we should not have destroyed two Japanese cities without "firing a warning shot." He clearly does not have a quantum of an idea of what it took to create those bombs: the time, the manpower, the material (plutonium and uranium enrichment takes a lot of time, money, and cutting-edge technology in itself). In no possible way could we have "warned" the Japanese by more or less throwing away one of those bombs that took billions of dollars to produce. Although the current trend does seem to be spend your way into further debt with billions of dollars wasted on stupid stimulus projects.

I assume that the prelude into the topic of atomic bombings was about "enhanced interrogation" used on the terrorists. The way I see it, it's much more ethical to torture someone who would willingly kill thousands of innocent people for information to prevent another 9/11 scenario than to treat the terrorist with the same human rights that upright law abiding citizens of this country receive. Because a terrorist has reduced his or herself to a being that deserves nothing better than a slow and painful death. It sickens me that all of these liberals are whining about how the terrorists deserve human rights when they hold knowledge that could lead to the prevention of more terrorist attacks.

Jon Stewart sucks. He's not funny. His show is a bunch of liberal crap.

Wow, fact are cool...

Whew! Need a rest day! I think Stewart's funny...

hey guys i am still up for more info on what i should after ive already had 2 days of rest this week..thanks

RE to Comment #5:

I dunno...in the photo, Lauren's form looks to be very Pose-ish, especially with respect to the positioning of the legs, from the little I know about that particular method of running...

Couldn't agree more with the video clip setting the facts straight on the bombing of Japan. Harry Truman made one of the toughest decisions anyone could ever make and did the right thing because he knew it would save so many lives. Reminds me of my time in Dr. Bob Lawrence's Foreign Policy class at Colorado State University. Lawrence is a raging Democrat and one of the greatest professors at CSU. He hammered home the point that the Atomic Bomb was the greatest force for peace that we have ever seen. Michael Franti (great singer, mis-guided politics) that says, "you can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb it in to peace" World War II was an instance where the world WAS bombed into peace, and Harry Truman should be commended for the courage to make a decision that he knew would weigh heavily on his psyche until the day he died. Why are we always so down on America? I love our country, I think we have a pretty good thing going here.

I wish the main page followed the code in my box.
NO POLITICS. NO RELIGION.

They are using Stewarts lack of knowledge on the atomic bombs to discredit his views on waterboarding.

This guy in the video keeps speaking of mute points while he is basing his entire argument on a mute point.

50 burpees for bringing up politics. GO!

Crossfit- yeah!
Politics on Crossfit- yawn.

Yay Lauren! Congrats for getting your picture on main page. You rock girl! See you next weekend!!!!

I think I just leaked fluids.

Props to Joy, Andy and Pete K representing CrossFit Vancouver. Strong showing!

50 burpees= fun, creates growth and happiness as the body is developing and the endorphin rush bathes the brain in joyfilled ecstasy!

People trying to convince other people to believe their politics= boring, creates devisiveness while both "sides" usually have their minds made up before the discussion (argument) takes place.

m/39/69kg/174cm... did my first 2 muscleups today!

HELLO KITTY FOR PRESIDENT

50 BURPEES FOR POLITICS!

need the rest, back is sore from the 120 PUs, later

Quite a total rebuttal. I have heard as history becomes further from this event such particular opinions being tossed around and will completely agree with his argument (ignorance in 20th century history classes in college is a bit too rampant). BUT.....

I think the whole rebuttal is wasted on an offhand comment that bore little relevance to the actual discussion at hand (one in which I actually agree with John Stewart). I don't equate the moral conundrums of the use of atomic weapons with the morality of the use of torture.

That aside this video is much better than that asinine video on CFE awhile back about how Muslims are apparently taking over the world because they're popping out more kids.

Sweeeeeeet, we got Lauren for the daily picture and the video of Sunday at the Qualifiers. What a great weekend.

Just watched the Every Second Counts up at OPT with the Big Dawgs. Sevan and Carey, you guys did an amazing job on your film; it was an emotional roller coaster for sure!

And just so you know, you spelled my NAME WRONG IN THE CREDITS!

#12 Kieran,

I agree with you that Jon Stewart got OWNED. However, with regards to your "enhanced interrogation" comments - how do you know those prisoners are terrorists? The fact of the matter is, you don't. You may know a few things about a few of them, but you know nothing about the vast majority, many of whom proclaim innocence despite being held without charge and tortured for months on end.

I don't agree that using the bomb in WWII was a war crime, but why are we still having this debate about torture? Waterboarding is torture, it is illegal under US and International Law, and it does no good and in fact harms the US and its goals abroad. My opinion is shared by such die hard liberals and John McCain, Colin Powell, and Matthew Alexander. Don't believe me read this:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/12/matthew_alexand.html

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/05/for_years_a_nea/

Also added to this are legions of interrogators who have actually kept this country safe by gleaning ACTIONABLE intellegence from hardened terrorists using humane, smart interrogation techniques. People like Ali Soufan, and Malcolm Nance who not only affirm that waterboarding is torture, but that its only use is in getting the victim to say whatever they think you want to hear in order to get it to stop. Great if you're China, or North Korea and you want to get false confessions for propaganda purposes, pretty lousy if you are looking to actually save lives in theater.

The pro-torture crowd is headed by "five-deferment" Cheney who has NEVER put his life on the line for his country, a fat drug addled radio comedian, some episodes of "21" and various mouthpieces over at Fox, headed by the great coward Hannity who reneged on his offer to be water boarded for charity.

So you have a group of people with DEMONSTRABLE experience in the field they are talking about saying torture is not only morally wrong, not just counterproductive, but ineffectual in the first place, versus a bunch of loudmouths with NO experience in the field continually citing ticking time bomb scenarios gleaned from fictional TV shows. Who are we supposed to believe here?

The only reason we are not having an investigation is that both parties are complicit in its execution. We need everyone who executed and/or signed off on torture to be investigated and punished where appropriate. Throwing some enlisted scapegoats in the tank while letting the people who told them to do what they did is not only hypocritical but a travesty of justice.

We are a nation of laws and that is our greatest strength. The law should apply to everyone Reps, Dems, Officers, Enlisted, Politicians and Bureaucrats. We need to get away from the idea that the law should only apply to the tribes we don't like and not to the ones we like. Lets get it out in the open and keep this from happening again!

Lauren, can you adjust the filter for rest days so that all posts that begin with the word "why" are automatically deleted? I'm talking about #9 and others that will likely follow....

Oh yeah and Jon Stewart got OWNED.

I think Stewart was somewhat correct in that we could have easily demonstrated the power of the atomic bomb without dropping it on a city of civilians. The host of the video saying the Japanese received sufficient warning is somewhat laughable, as the Japanese probably were not fully aware of the destructive power of the bomb (seeing s it was top-secret). It would be like Iran warning us that they have a new futuristic weapon that they will use to destroy a number of our cities. How many people would run away in terror-not many! Also, our countries were nearing the end of a long war, so each side was used ignoring crap dropped from planes.
I'm not saying that what was done was a war crime, but trying to say there was no other way/no other choice, is a bit of a stretch. As Jon Stewart said, drop one in a non-populated area-I'm sure it would have had a similar result.
And for all the people knocking Jon Stewart I say-don't hate on the only reliable news source in America!!

Nice pic Lauren, Hope you have a Happy Birthday.

Just got my rings in today. I will be doing "active rest" trying to figure out this whole muscle-up thing....

Jon Stewart actually did apologize for the Harry Truman comment at the beginning of the next episode.

So many arguments, so little time...

I agree with Jon Stewart. We should have just fire-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki like we did Tokyo. The overall death totals were comparable, but the long term cancer rates resulting from firebombing Tokyo (or Dresden) were much less.

Further, the bombs WERE intended to intimidate the Russians. Something about two birds with one nuke... how does that go?

Also, since we all saw _The Patriot_ staring Mel Gibson, I'm sure we all felt that British Officer(Sorry to any brits out there reading) who burned the town-folk in the church was WAY out of line. It seems clear he was simply reacting to the colonial terrorist with the same conviction we act agains our modern terrorist, but he didn't have enough buckets to waterboard the whole town... So, since being wet is better than being burned, I like water boarding too.

Oh yeah, did anyone else think it was funny that Comedy Central is now "Mainstream Media"?

I feel like some of the general disinterest for debating politics on the main page is mostly caused by tunnel vision, laziness or an aversion to being uncomfortable. I'm not really sure what the cause is but I suspect that these discussions linked with the daily WODS would seem more pertinent and worthy of consideration if we were all sleeping in fox holes tonight.

The Canada West Regional Qualifier Video was probably the most riveting piece of documentary that I've seen to date that captures what we know to be true: CrossFit is the Sport of Fitness. I'm immediately invested in each of the athletes going to the games. Well done. Each athlete featured, (even the ones that didn't make it) told a story of grit and determination. Thanks for sharing!

Shane: you count TDS as the ONLY reliable source of news in America? Wow. News for you bud, but The Daily Show is an entertainment show. I watch it daily, but not as a source of information. South Park provides better insight into current events than TDS. I'd rather get unbiased news from... well, anywhere.

matt Rodgers at 8:10 PM

Does your lack of knowledge between mute and moot mean we can disregard you?

I mean we could hear Jon couldn't we?

For those interested who have not seen it already, the full discussion between Cliff May and Jon Stewart is worth watching (WFS):

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225895&title=cliff-may

The point that Mr. May is making, to my mind, is that the correct analysis revolves around what is the appropriate standard of conduct toward different types of individuals (e.g. U.S. citizen accused of civil crime/uniformed battlefield prisoner of war/captured terror suspect/captured terrorist leader) and does not easily lend itself to moral absolutism. Stewart’s “yes” reminds us that the most virulent criticism of President Bush’s terror policies comes from those individuals who would likely view Lincoln, FDR and Truman as war criminals. The “no torture!” analysis is overly simplistic at best.

Jakers, that's funny :-)

I love rest day mud slinging.

Its always great to hear on every fourth day on this blog how inappropriate it is to have "one sided political commentary"

My only comment on today's rest day topic, I usually don't comment on rest days unless I really know the topic well, is that its not divisive enough.

I wish that the United States could have developed the atomic bomb earlier in the war effort, it would have saved more lives.

I also should comment to any new people here that mental jousting with Bingo should be taken with great care. He knows his sh!t and he is very well written. Mental jousting with me is a much easier target.

Have Fun, Train Hard,

Billy

hey guys..
was going to see if i could get some advice..i know this week wednesday was a rest day..which i did that..than thursday i didnt know how to do 1 set thrusters so i opted to rest again..friday i did the muscle ups and saturday i did "kelly"..i dont want to have 3 rest days this week..so what would be a good alternative for a missed workout...suggestions?

From Taji, Iraq

I knew I was out of shape, but you guys have brought that to a hole new level...thanks Crossfit. I am a day behind in the WOD, and I am so glad tomarrow is a rest day.

@DanielATL

"The “no torture!” analysis is overly simplistic at best."

No, I'm sorry. The "no torture" position is based heavily on both the law and tradition of this country. The "sometimes torture is okay because we say it saves lives" position is moral relativism at its best (worst). Torture is always wrong. Period.

http://www.vimeo.com/videos/search:tommy%20hackenbruck
my video wods
#1 2:58
#2 6:13
#3 11:12
Total 20:23

Love to see some other times, start posting everybody. Best of luck, I know whoever qualifies will do well and definitely deserves it.

The only thing Jon Stewart can offer is mockery. Nice to see him get so completely pwned.

waterboarding <> torture

Sorry, not even in the same league as power tools & blowtorches, and hammers. Not. Even. Close.

Jon Stewart's apology at the beginning of the next show: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225918&title=Harry-Truman-Was-Not-a-War-Criminal

Kind of silly to judge him on what he admits openly was a mistake.

Awesome video, thank you for the extended content!!
It allowed us to witness glorious lifts and the same people struggling with more weight. Awesome....

first of all, i'm not that into politics in this sort of forum, but since it was started, oh well.

thank you rhowk for a great post, i think you said a lot that needed to be said.

at the same time, the fact that we are a nation of laws can hold us back at times from expediency. the question is, which is more important to us: our legitimacy as a nation of laws and legal process, or our ability to move quickly in the direction necessary for security. this is not a rhetorical question and i certainly do not have answer to it, especially since--as the petraeus quote from rhowk's post brings up--methods that we think are able to expedite our security can in fact bring more violent hatred against us. i think that this fact underlies the importance of the quality of our political leadership, whether it be conservative or liberal. we need leadership that can understand these issues and make informed decisions based on the enormous glut of information that they receive, and not based on the desires of their voter base back home.

Personally, I believe that while the atomic bomb attacks were horrific, they were the result of an informed decision by the president of our nation, in the best interest of that nation. wartime estimates of the sacrifice necessary for a successful invasion of mainland japan ranged as high as half a million american lives--do a quick google search for iwo jima if this number seems absurd to you--and the president did what he could do to avoid such an outcome.

as for jon stewart, let's not crucify him for something he said on a moment's notice in a heated interview, espcially if--as someone posted above--he later apologized.

finally--and sorry for the novel i just wrote--congratulations to all the athletes from canada west; the stuff in that video was big time.

Here are several things Bill Whittle said or implied that I do not think have much, if any, bearing on whether Truman was a war criminal for making the decision to drop the A-bombs on H and S:

1. It would have been too expensive for the US to waste a bomb on a demonstration explosion.
2. Japan attacked first in December of '42 so the people of Japan did not deserve a demonstration explosion.
3. A demonstration explosion would not have resulted in surrender because the Hiroshima explosion did not result in surrender.
4. Jon Stewart is a narcissistic comedian who doesn't know what it is like to be soldier in a war.
5. Jon Stewart's toughest decision is what he'll have his assistant get him for lunch.

As an aside, here is another thing that is not relevant to the question of whether Truman was a war criminal for making the decision to drop the A-bombs on H and S:
1. In a later broadcast Jon Stewart retracted his earlier comment that Truman was a war criminal, and called his earlier comment "dumb" and "stupid".

Here are three things Bill Whittle said or implied that could have some bearing on whether Harry Truman was a war criminal for making the decision to drop the A-bombs on H and S:

1. H was a significant military target.
2. Dropping the bombs may have resulted in the loss of fewer lives than invading Japan (given that the US would accept only unconditional surrender).
3. The US made some effort to inform residents of H that H would be destroyed (though for the reasons mentioned by Shane at 30 this effort likely is not as relevant as Whittle seemed to think it was).
4. Bombing H with the 'conventional' incendiary then in use could have resulted in nearly the same casualties.

Though Whittle mentioned the USSR in his opening, he did not discuss it later - he should have. Also, it would have been nice if, after quoting a top Japanese commander to the effect that Japan would never surrender, Whittle also gave some indication of the view of the US's top commander in the Pacific (MacArthur), who apparently thought dropping the bombs was unnecessary and that with the USSR poised to attack Japan (or broker a surrender at Japan's request) the war would end before October of 45.

Ban the bomb. End of story.
The world would be a better place without it, no matter what.

#48

How would you pose to enforce your 'Ban' on the Bomb ?? Spineless Treaties and the useless UN perhaps?

Carl

I'm glad it's a rest day. Woke up sick. Son's been sick several days, so I guess it's my turn to chill.

Can't wait to do todays WOD as Rx'd... REST is a good thing. Kelly was a very mean woman yesterday :-)

It is fun to read the responses to the political topics... It is a good view into the minds of some of the people of this great country, people that physically I admire and aspire to be like.... however some of the thought processes that go into many of the comments I will never understand..... The good news is that we don't have to agree on politics to agree that we need to "Get back on the bar".... 3...2...1...GO! I love CrossFit, it has helped me become the best physical being that I have ever been and I continue to advance..... Thanks Coach and Lauren, and all the CrossFitters out there that make up this amazing community. Can't wait to open my own box and help drive others to personal greatness.
Hooah!

A great video for a logic class on classic argument fallacies.

I don't agree with Stewart. But the argument presented in the video makes me want to...

The Japenese were hard core. The bomb was the only thing that would have stopped them.

jg

Whittle did seem to be cherry-picking a bit. If we get serious about discussing issues, we are bound to have some ridiculous things come out of our mouths from time to time. Sometimes we say things we don't mean, and other times we mean something completely different from what we appear to mean. In this case, Stewart recognized that his off-the-cuff statement wasn't necessarily appropriate or perhaps reflective of his feelings on the matter, so he apologized for making it.

I would have much preferred seeing Whittle discuss the topic with Stewart. Waiting for potential "gotcha" comments, exposing possible flaws in their underlying assumptions, and demonstrating an ability to poke holes in them to your audience seems pretty low on the usefulness scale. One of my favorite things about the Daily Show is that there are some really conservative guests who have an opportunity to share their ideas sitting across from the host without being shouted down.

Seriously, this is a fitness website.. leave your political "opinion" out of it. I love to come on here and learn as much as possible about crossfit, nutrition etc, and some boob talking smack on Jon Stewart isn't what I want to read about.. Save that for your Hannity and Coulter site blogging.

This is ridiculous. Some off-brand conservative pundit using his internet TV show for a 17 minute diatribe against Jon Stewart. We all know conservatives hate liberal Jon Stewart and vice-versa. Why use crossfit.com as a launchpad for "discussions" that are dead horse arguments and whose substance and outcome are known before they even begin? I hope next rest day we can argue about Roe v. Wade and the immorality of abortion.

I feel like an atom bomb survivor after Kelly. . . Some R&R will be nice today. Maybe some Tennis or Croquet. . . hahaha

Comments on the video,

The video makes many good points, but the suggestion that we "wasted" 25% of our total arsenal with the Trinity test is so mind-blowingly ludicrous it's not even funny. Overall, I think the video makes a compelling argument for our use of the atomic bomb. But the implication that we wasted material on a test is a little disingenuous.

OK made up "Kelly" this morning but only completed 4 Rounds; the congestion and 85% Humidity didn't help things out too much.
So 4 rounds completed in 23:52
Rd1) 4:27
Rd2) 5:50
Rd3) 6 :19
Rd4) 7:15
The box jobs really slowed me down. Hopefully next time a bout with Kelly comes around I will feel better & finish her.

# 39 I can see your not getting much help here , I know the feeling . I suggest you go to the forum on crossfit brand x
Lots of help there . Love the mainsite but there doesn't seem to be much patience for certain questions on the comments by a select few. Probably gonna get some slack for my opinion but
T/S

DanielATL #39:

Welcome. You missed a max effort day, specifically you missed an overhead workout for max. Did you not know how to do thrusters, or did you not understand the concept of 1-1-1-1-1-1-1? What would you like to accomplish in your make-up WOD? Would you like something that is as close to what you missed or do you just wish to do a WOD?

What suggestions any of us might make would depend on how you answer those questions. Don't forget, Coach has a WOD for you tomorrow and he's like Santa--he knows what you did today, and you may pay for that tomorrow!

#55
oooh, oooh, let me preview that debate here:

lunatic 1: stay out of my body
lunatic 2: you're going to hell, baby killer
lunatic 1: there is no such thing as hell, only love
lunatic 2: atheists will burn
lunatic 1: f*** you
lunatic 2: no, f*** you

#56
really? really?
i think you have some apologizing for your own stupid choice of words.

I love CrossFit and I'm always amazed and inspired by everyone that is part of this incredible community.

But please, no politics! Can't we all just get along? ...for time.

Old Me: Rest Day is for pansies, I'll go bench.

Crossfit Me: Thank God for rest days :)

Happy Suday....

For everyone complaining about politics on this website don't read it if you don't like it. Coach has been posting this stuff for years to promote a intellectual workout on rest days. Just like the WOD's, no one is forcing you to do it.

m/5'3"/160/29

no gym no weights variation

5 rds
400+m
30 box jumps (park bench)
10 burpees

20:24

Was doing my usual sunday morning stroll of the key crossfit sites and found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozC5BYOgoNE&feature=player_embedded over on crossfit.ca. Pretty cool. Always interesting to see what other affiliates are supporting.

#5, Lauren is a former track athlete so if you watch her running you will see she is very pose like.
I too had the pleasure of watching the Every seconds count movie at OPT last night and concur with gaucoin that is was a great job by Carey and Sevan and an awesome movie.

There's so many problems with this guy's argument that I would love to point out.

C'mon just because you dropped leaflets on all the major cities doesn't mean you can then bomb them with impunity. Do you really expect the entire urban population of Japan to just flee to the countryside and starve?

Drop the pretense that this was an attack on a military target; we all know that's not true. The bombings were an attempt to kill enough civilians that it would break the regime's will to fight. Basically it was not all that different than a terrorist attack.

Also, quit equating Pearl Harbor with Hiroshima as if that justifies Hiroshima. One was a military attack on another military; the other was an attack against civilians.

Thank you rest day!!!!

Hi FRAT and community...Ecuadorian guys want to take some crossfit up there in U.S.A. (they actually live up there most part of time) they try it here un Ecuador and they just loved it....CAN YOU GIVE ME THE NAMES AND THE ADRESS OF THE AFILIATES IN ARIZONA??? PLEASE!!!

Have a great rest day big hugs to the FRAT!!!

Does anyone else get huge bruises on back of their arm about 2" above the elbow when they do muscle-ups? My wrists are torn up, but I expect that. The back of the arm thing makes me wonder what I am doing wrong? Any suggestions?

Wow crossfit. You never cease to amaze me. Just when I think it's safe to go back into the WOD.......bam! Crazy conservative talk! Isn't PJTV the site that used "Joe the Plumber" as their correspondent? I mean just wow.

Rob, no one's complaining. And just like I do not feel "forced" to do a WOD, I do not feel "forced" to read or listen to anything. If I choose to click on a link, I do it out of choice or intrigue as to what is behind door number 1. That's all.

So please don't shoo me and others away for stating an opinion. After all, this is a free country and... OH CRAP! I'm getting drawn into a political discussion!

I... MUST... GO... REST... NOW...

As I sit here thankful for a rest day, I was looking over my logbook of WODs. I started following crossfit site on Jan 1 this year and in just 5 short months what a difference! I dont want to bore everyone but this stuff works!!! In crossfit total Im up almost 100# and so much more fit. I used to think I was in good shape but now I know I am in better shape than ever. Anyways everyone enjoy the rest day, and if you dont like the political posts try to get this world-class
fitness workouts somewhere else. Keep up the great work Coach and Lauren and all fellow crossfitters!!!!

Thinking about attending the Level 1 cert in San Diego next time it comes up. Any thoughts????

By the way I was feeling energetic after fighting with "Kelly" yesterday and did the crossfit football WOD Tabata Deadlift, I am so sore today and yet I cant wait to get back to the gym. Whats my problem????

I appreciate the political stuff posted on here. It's so refreshing to not always have a liberal viewpoint stuffed down my throat.

I am with you Kenny. My legs are sore as hell, I skipped last rest day and am fried and yet I am painfully drawn to the gym today. I know better but it is taking a lot of will-power to not go workout...

At least Jon Stewart admits when he made a mistake. Bill O'Reilly just ignores his mistakes and acts like it should be true as long as he was the one who said it...er, yelled it.

#70 I get those same bruises even from ring dips. I haven't figured out if it's from impact of the straps or rings or what.

F/22/5'6"/142

3 RFT:
500m row
12 deads @145
21 box jumps
11:21

Would really love to see the political links gone...don't see the relevance to CrossFit.

F)52/144lbs/5'7
Did yesterdays wod today done in 24:31.
And to all who complain about the talk of the day,as a blessedly free country all are entitled to an opinion.And have the right to express it.You don't have to agree but at least be thankful we live in a country where a person can still freely have one.I don't understand how anyone can say only what they say or think matters.I'm a proud american and believe at some time we are all right or wrong in what we see as right or wrong.God bless this country it's the best in "my opinion in the world...:)have a good and blessed day!

We're always the good guys, they're always the bad guys. This is the thoughts of unreasonable simpletons on every corner of the earth. Kill a million to save a billion. This is the official mantra of the collectivist.

Hey my fellow Crossfitters! I am in Iraq right now but go on R&R in about 30 days. I just ordered my first set of KB's! I got a set from Rogue with 35, 53, 70 lb bells. I cannot wait to get back to use them! Happy rest day. Anxious for tomorrow...

I for one am actually quite fond of the political posts and chat, once upon a time it was a CITIZENS obligation to stay current and be an active player in their community. We ALL should be having these chats on our own lest the powers that be rule the world without consent of the people. I am including a thing from Wikipedia on Cognitive Dissonance, and I would like people to think about something. It has been well stated that the most telling thing about a culture is how they treat their criminals (or detainees). I know this community is heavy with LEO/Mil and there may be dissonance because of that...but what actions we take part in by default becomes how we are treated in return. There will be Americans captured, not just now, but 100 years from now, and our actions today will determine how these people will be treated.

"Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitudes and beliefs, and also the awareness of one's behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.[1] Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.
Dissonance normally occurs when a person perceives a logical inconsistency among his or her cognitions. This happens when one idea implies the opposite of another. For example, a belief in animal rights could be interpreted as inconsistent with eating meat or wearing fur. Noticing the contradiction would lead to dissonance, which could be experienced as anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment, stress, and other negative emotional states. When people's ideas are consistent with each other, they are in a state of harmony, or consonance. If cognitions are unrelated, they are categorized as irrelevant to each other and do not lead to dissonance.
A powerful cause of dissonance is an idea in conflict with a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as "I am a good person" or "I made the right decision." The anxiety that comes with the possibility of having made a bad decision can lead to rationalization, the tendency to create additional reasons or justifications to support one's choices. A person who just spent too much money on a new car might decide that the new vehicle is much less likely to break down than his or her old car. This belief may or may not be true, but it would likely reduce dissonance and make the person feel better. Dissonance can also lead to confirmation bias, the denial of disconfirming evidence, and other ego defense mechanisms."

Didn't Jon apologize the very next episode? I'm all for whatever particular right leaning link they have up there that I may or may not agree with, but lets stay current. That was weeks ago.

It was a heated argument. Let it die. Seriously.

im no history scholar, but i think had we not bombed hiro and naga we were set to take tokyo...which would have been worse? it worked out alright...

I have become concerned over this trend I'm seeing in regards to the rest day posts.

A year ago and preceding, there was a good amount of constructive discussion regarding the posts; now, I feel, that with the growth of CF popularity, there is a growing group of people who are satisfied with ignorance towards current events other than their new personal records.

It is one thing to disagree with a posted item, but if you are going to leave a comment like "Boo Politics! Yay Burpees," than you are just going to be successful in flaunting your ignorance towards a cornerstone of the crossfit website and community.

Did the crossfit simivalley workout today. Going to the 38 special, REO Speedwagon and Styx concert tonight and wanted to be a workout ahead in case tomorrow is a little difficult.

Didn't catch all the peculiarities of the workout but did the following

30 20 10 of 95# squat clean thrusters, 1 1/2 pood KB swings (American style) and KTE's.

6:02/5:44/2:49 (10/5/5/5/5)(4/5/6/5)(5/5)
2:30/2:18/:35 (10/15/5)(15/5)(10)
1:471:14/:19 (15/15)(15/5) (10)
Total 23:24

Thrusters felt as much like presses as they did thrusters after a while. All cleans ATA.

(1)Would someone tell me what those charged with the security of our nation are supposed to do when they capture a terrorist that holds intelligence as to our enemies' whereabouts and intentions? Should they say, "Excuse me Mr. Terrorist, I know you hate my country and you wish to see everything that we stand for destroyed, but we're being REALLY nice to you now so would you please tell us what you know?"

If you have so many fundamental disagreements with our current techniques, get off the sidelines, join the fight, and show what an interrogation is supposed to look like.

Getting tired of the monday morning quarterbacks...

(2)Jon Stewart is a jackass, and this video points it out. If you criticize the producers for cherry-picking one of Stewart's comments, then you have to criticize Stewart himself. That's essentially his entire show, minus the interviews. At least it was his entire show during the Bush Administration, things are a little different now...

(3)To those who feel uncomfortable with political discussions on rest days, please watch the interview with CCTJoey in the archives. It might help you understand why its ok to have these back-and-forths. If not, like has been said by many on both sides of the political aisle, don't click on the website links on rest days.

I don't believe the topic is supposed to pertain only to Jon's comments since many people have the same thoughts. Since he did apologize is a mute point. It's not a gotcha comment that is constantly used by both parties and the media. Believe the intent of each rest day topic is to discuss the issue in a civil manner.

Regarding torture. I sure would not want to be in the position to make that decision. I can see both sides of the argument. But I sure would not want to be the one responsible for the deaths of many Americans if I made the wrong choice either way.

tommyhackenbruck 6'1" 195

Solid - as I would expect!

I hope you make it to the games man!
Thanks for posting.

Hows the new Affiliate coming?

M/49/151/1-1-06

Did WOD #3 from Last Chance, women's weight.
10-9-...2-1
105# Power Clean
PU
DB Swing 35#

20:45

Humbled again. Man it's just not possible to express how hard CF is, and how impressive really good Crossfitters are doing this stuff.

One day you wake up and realize that you don't have any enemies. One day followers of bin Laden and other radical religious leaders will realize they don't have any enemies. They are manufactured. Soon the answer will surface. The real enemies are authority, collectivism, and fear.

they say there are three things not to talk about at the dinner table- politics, sex and religion. why not? these are life's most interesting topics because people feel so strongly about them. How can we really understand people if we dont have an appreciation for those who think differently than us? don't be discussion censors, let it out.

All Links WFA:
Today's English lesson from an engineer. They are Moot points. Please.

moot
Main Entry:
3moot
Function:
adjective
Date:
circa 1587

1 a: open to question : debatable b: subjected to discussion : disputed2: deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moot WFS link forgotten in last post.

#70 sox fan. Move the buckles up.

#88 1) The debate on whether torture works is about as easy as judging a deadlift contest. The weight either comes off the ground, or it does not. I can stand around all day and brag about how my technique and my strength allow me to be a much better deadlifter than some other guy, but until I actually go over there, grab the bar, and lift that weight off of the ground I am just a bunch of hot air.

Guys like Matthew Alexander, Ali Soufan, and Malcolm Nance have lifted the weight. They have gotten actionable intelligence from hard core terrorists that has saved lives in theater. And they have done it without torture. In one case they did it by offering one of the diabetic terrorists sugar free cookies, he broke down crying and told them everything they wanted to know. In another Mathew Alexander actually apologized to one of these guys for Abu Gharib, the terrorist gave him info that led to the capture of Zarqawi and the location of an Al Queda safehouse in Iraq. Not very Macho, and I'm sure it'll never make an episode of "24" but it worked. Furthermore, these interogators have categorically and emphatically stated that waterboarding and torture is ineffectual, and COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to real intelligence gathering. Read their testimony.

I have yet to see a) any reputable refutation of either their arguments or their authority, or b) any real evidence that waterboarding or any other form of torture has produced ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE that saved lives in theater.

As to John Stewart, you either like him or not and that is your completely viable opinion. The torture issue is a question of simple Mechanics and results, loving/hating Stewart is clearly subjective.

The pro-torture crowd is blowing a lot of hot air on this issue, the actual interrogators are lifting the weight.

Did Barbara. Or she did me... Clocked in at 47:04.

Any man OR woman faster than me is a beast. I felt like I did it as fast as humanly possible. Killer WOD!

BTW PB by 5 minutes...

Nice to see a 17-minute rebuttal for a late-night comedian. Whatever makes you guys feel smart...

I don't know how I feel about the bombings, as far as whether or not they were "justified".

In watching that video what really jumped out at me was the tragedy of war. To think about human beings suffering, soldiers or civilians made me very very sad.

God Bless.

Did Fran today, 5:58 PR by 6:58

All the talk over the 'right' and 'wrong' of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seems, to me, to overlook one critical fact: The Japanese population (yes, the civilians) deserved it!

I don't mean in some sort of xenophobic 'they're funny lookin' we oughta bomb them' way (in my best southern accent) but in the sense that they, as a nation, facilitated a regime of unspeakable brutality which spent the better part of 10 years raping and pillaging their way through Asia while reaping huge civilian benefit from it (slave labour to build domestic industry for example)

This is to say nothing of their society's ability to produce sadists of unparalleled cruelty (Nanking, Manilla, pretty much any PoW camp of the era - this is by no means an exhaustive list). Japanese cruelty at the time was not simply a few isolated incidents of desperate or demented soldiers - it was a systematic and pervasive social attitude that they were superior and had the right to make use of those they colonised or defeated in battle however they pleased (and their pleasures more often than not went in the direction of torture - and not the modern 'grey area' kind).

The sadism of the Japanese war machine and the Japanese citizenry of WWII cannot be separated and it is for this reason that, on the collective level, no innocents were killed at Hiroshima or Nagasaki and thus arguments as to the right and wrong are, in my opinion, moot (nee mute ;).

Everyone needs to relax about the videos and articles posted here. Whether you are on one side or the other of any controversial link posted, knowledge and higher thinking of difficult and often uncomfortable subjects is healthy, worthwhile, and interesting. I appreciate the postings (controversial or otherwise) and applaude the website for doing so. Keep it up!

#99 John-in-Jersey... I'm with you, brother.

I don't understand at all, the posts about "rest day topics shouldn't be political" etc. Why click "Comments"? You can just log on, see its a rest day, come back tomorrow. Save the rest of us the trouble of scrolling through useless complaints that add nothing to the discussion. Unless you just like to "hear" yourself talk, in which case there may be a place for you on the radio.

I don't post much on rest days, nor do I give the more argumentative posts anything past a cursory scan. But I do appreciate all the viewpoints which come out on certain topics. John Stewart is a comedian. I happen to think he's entertaining. But anyone who takes his opinions & satire seriously enough to spend time formulating a thorough criticism of him is only exposing himself as little more than a groupie: someone who takes an entertainer more seriously than his achievements should merit.

Yesterday

"Kelly" scaled down a bit
5 Rounds for time of:
400m run (treadmill)
15 box jumps (22" box was all I could find)
15 wall ball shots, 20lb ball

Time: 21:54

Today

30 Muscle-up progressions for time (I used Jeff Tucker's progression)

time: 4:23(PR) previous: 6:10

time to raise the bars a little bit

#100 Joe C: Congrats on the PR, nice work.

I don't oppose links about politics. They allow interesting arguments to come about and bring certain topics to light but if you're going to post a very biased link why not post something from the other side also as a counter argument? Or something more moderate? Seems like a better choice than posting a link bashing a comic who was obviously lacking in knowledge on the subject in which he was speaking.

GRRRR! It practically killed me in the beginning, but in the end, I showed that #@!%*& WOD.

30 MU's: 22:31

Almost 3 times longer than my PR. 17 misses by the time I reached my first 15. Eventually, I took off my iPod and my heart rate strap, and just buckled down, focusing on technique. Apparently, I'm doing these just infrequently enough to allow my brain to forget how to do them. Get well soon Bingo!

Blackout #105

good point...I don't think it is the bringing up of an issue, but the clear and heavy bias toward one side over the other. Discussion is good but the way it is presented here seems to be more about bashing one side and creating a division.

Here is a picture of Tyson Gay running the fastest 100 m dash under all conditions (it's wind-aided, which is why it's not the world record). http://www.letsrun.com/2008/images/gay1002.JPG (WFS) Would a POSE advocate please explain why their method is not in use?

Fran's a coming...or maybe Linda...

Those are my guesses

God, I hope it's Fran!!!
I just can't wait to find out. I love this Crossfit.

M/38/6'2"/200

"Kelly"
(18" Box Jump)

26:25

105 & 107

I believe the posts allow you or anyone to provide their viewpoint in a constructive manner. It does not matter what the topic is since both sides are free to comment. You can blast the topic out of the water if you have the ammo.

That would be a better way to quiet the storm instead of bashing the topic that is posted.

I don't think that "fran" make sense for tomorrow i saw maeby something with deadlift....but hey with the Coach you never know...

wow, great video. I run into so many kids who get their world-view and opinions from Stewart, its pretty scary that these modern day lemmings can so easily be swayed by cable television. What else will they believe in, when its packaged in a GQ cutesy/cool smile and witty comeback? Stewart is a media guy, never got his hands dirty. Never really worked. He is a gigantic waste. The video was excellent, and easily refuted any of Stewart's knee jerk emotional ramblings. Kudos to Crossfit HQ for linking to this, and defending this history of this country from those who wish to take it down.

Comment #9, then disconnect

I think being crossfit includes challenging the mind. Being able to debate this incredibly complex issue is fundamentally why we are debating it. We are American - with the right to free speech.

Thanks to the brave men and women who fight every day for the right of all of us to call each other names here on this site.

Good rest day. Spent it FREE.

WWII was total warfare - societies, cultures, and economies of nations were mobilized and tied into the military to defeat the enemy. The opposing side - all of it, including civilians - were fair game for full destruction. We dropped leaflets, but there was no real concern for the Japanese and no real sympathy for any that would, and did, die as a result of the atomic bombs. So what? That was part of the total warfare that the Japanese brought to us and our response in kind. And total destruction of the enemy, at all costs, was the norm. No one at that time felt otherwise. The use of the nukes was justified for a whole host of reasons and Americans shouldn't lose one second of sleep over it.

The only difference between the total warfare fought in WWII and the limited conflicts we wage today in Afghanistan and Iraq is that while we're waging a limited war, the enemy seeks total warfare against us. Their ultimate goal is our total destruction. At least we take prisoners! And, yes, a few of them are interrogated to extract information that often leads, and has led, to saved lives. Waterboarding is a rather low level of torture, if torture at all. We don't draw and quarter people anymore (unlike our enemies that think nothing of chopping a few heads off for sport). Real torture hasn't occurred.

It's a shame that the further away we get from the events of 9/11, the more likely we are to criticize the policies of our own leaders who, for all of their faults, kept this country safe throughout their tenure. I hope that our new leadership will continue to do the same and the recent backpeddling on the detainee release/Gitmo closure appears to be a step in the right direction. The sooner we all remember that we're at war, the sooner the war will end. Our military is at war, the rest of America is at the mall (or was anyway until the recession hit in full force).

So what does this have to do with the video? Jon Stewart's statement about Truman's decision (even though he apologized in a later episode) symbolizes the current left-of-center thinking pervading America today. The left is on a witch hunt with the right and former Pres. Bush the targets. They're trying to make the entire Bush administration and the GOP into the bad guys by putting our enemies on a higher pedestal than our enemies will ever deserve. It's sad and frustrating to see this happen. I fear that the constant attacks on the right, rather than on the real enemy, will lead to our ultimate defeat. Time for the left to realize that their freedoms were bought and paid for by the brute force of arms of our men and women willing to die for our country rather than surrender their freedom.

Conner 10yr male

programmed his own wod while his dad and I were doing Kelly.

10X24" box jump
250 squats
20X20" box jump
250 squats
50X16" box jumps
250 squats
100X12" box jumps
250 squats

by the time I was off the floor from Kelly he was well into 100X12" box jumps and I said "holy cow! you've done 750 squats?!!" His form was decent and to a med ball AND he is still walking and feels good today! To be young......

@ #60

love the Santa reference...soooo true! :)

Post for tomorrow already!!!!!!!!!

I don't need to read about Atomic Bombs....I want Monday's WOD........for goddsake man!

JD

whats the latest the wod has been posted?

2 points (and a short defense of point two)

1) this is not a political discussion it is a philosophical discussion

2) Utility - The good of the many must outweigh the good of the few.

Defense of possible objections to point 2:

1) no one can deny that a ground invasion would have been far more costly in lives lost

2) without hitting a city there is the very real possibility that Japan goes on to think that we only have one bomb or that we will not use it on high value targets.

(Aside from this discussion but relevant to any discussion on utility)
3) history has shown that the greatest societal utility has been created from individualism and decentralization not collectivism and centralization.

part time philosopher out

"Let them who desire peace prepare for war"

#96 (rhowk),

Why would you see irrefutable evidence that the interrogations worked or produced real results? I know that that sounds counter-intuitive, but hear me out. Do you think it would be strategic for the CIA to advertise on its website the results of its interrogations? Of course not. There's a reason why we have top secret clearances in this country, and why certain information is deemed highly classified. The public does not need to know every little detail.

Do you remember when the President first began campaigning and he promised to remove the soldiers if he was elected. What's happened since? He's authorized a "surge" in Afghanistan. Why did he do this? I don't know, but if I was a betting man I'd place my money on the fact that he started to receive intel reports that convinced him to change his mind.

My point is this; most of the naysayers have no idea what's really going on in this war, and they probably shouldn't. I just think its irresponsible to tell those that are on the frontline, and know what's going on, how to do their jobs.

Thanks for your counter-post.

Cheers.

#5 Jerry,

What's so bad about Lauren's form? She has a slight bend in her left knee, neutral head position, and her right leg is about 1 frame from being in the figure 4 or Pose position. Sure, she could have her hands a little higher, but overall not bad and certainly not horrific.

Go Wings!!

Facts do not = conservative. 2+2=4. That is not a conservative concept. The Emperor/God and his looney/suicidal followers were devouring human lives and needed to be stopped.

Lots of facts in that piece mocking Stewarts beliefs. Yeah, yeah, he apologized. Time to update that tool's Wiki. "...called Truman a war criminal....later apologized" and so forth.

Steve, 118

I agree it is unseemly for current democrats who have been in office since 2003 and who explicitly or implicitly supported the more questionable methods of Bush's War on Terror to now be going after Bush et al. Really, new Republicans and new Democrats should be going after them all. These people swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. Not being up to the job is no excuse.

And I agree with you up to a point that America owes her freedoms to her armed forces and the sacrifices of her service men and women.

However, while the military can protect America from invasion, it cannot keep America free. The real foundation and guardian of America's freedoms are America's freedoms - speech, vote, commerce, etc. It is the love American citizens have for liberty, rights, laws and making money, that makes America strong. If that love is lost, if it fades too much or is taken for granted - left as something to get glassy-eyed about over a few beers on the back lawn - then the Republic (though not necessarily the United States) will be in jeopardy.

Without the freedoms, without the laws, the US is just another nation. Without the freedoms and the laws, the US would be a poorer, weaker nation.

Keep the laws, keep the Republic, lose the torture.

57 y.o 154 5'10

Yesterday's WOD enhanced:
5 rounds
run 1 mile
30 24" box jumps
30 20lb wall balls

1:03:04

comment #117 - Jesse despite what you think they were not trying to "make the loads appear huge" although I do think there were some impressive lifts. you can find that information here - http://crossfitcalgary.ca/Western%20Regionals%20Results%20-2009.pdf

those plates happen to be perfect for CrossFit due to their durability and surface area, try not to be so ignorant next time...

#131 your a stud

i ment #130

What a long video to rebut a comedian's offhanded comment on an unrelated topic. Congratulations, you nailed him.

Say what you want about Jon Stewart, he's more thoughtful and even-handed than all of the right wing pundits and news-o-tainment talking heads put together. Even during the Bush years, he made fun of the whiny inneffectual Democrats and now he's as critical of the Dems as anyone else, but you've never seen Bill-O or Rush say an ill word about the republicans. He may be liberal, but he's no toadie.

Beautiful picture of Lauren. I believe she was 16 seconds ahead of 2nd place on a 1K run. That's nothing to complain about. Was amazing to watch in person.

Are not those who preach NO POLITICS/NO RELIGION but cowards, hiding behind the veil of their own selfish pride, too afraid to venture into the hallways of discerning discussions with those of differing views? Do they prefer to hide in their own forest of cowardly and twisted thoughts, too afraid of what others might bring to light of their ill conceived ideals?

The video presented a truth that many have forgotten, and many more have never learned. May we never forget that violence, and the brave men who bring it, is often very necessary in the eradication of evil; evil that is often brought about by cowardly men who hide behind a wall of fear, shielded of criticisms to their own ideals, and guarded by the “Thought Police” of their totalitarian regimes.

#126 Naysayers like Matthew Alexander, Ali Soufan, and Malcolm Nance are intimately involved not only in the current wars but have in some cases up to 40 years experience in intelligence gathering and interrogation. They all say that torture does not work, and has never worked, and provide evidence that what HAS kept our country safe is interrogation techniques NOT involving torture. Any reasonable person would either refute their credentials or their arguments or have to admit that their pro-torture arguments are wrong.

Like I said before you eventually have to either lift the weight, or stop jawing about it.

I assume from your post you are trying to draw some inference from what the CIA is not doing or what Obama is not doing that they somehow condone torture. I'm sorry but that is a pretty weak basis for argument. From all the available evidence we have so far, it is pretty plain that what has actually kept us safe is good police work by a variety of dedicated professionals. Torture it seems was employed by amateurs to try gather confessions ex post facto that a link existed between Sadaam and Al Queda in a vain attempt to justify invading Iraq. This further reinforces the point that torture is only useful to generate propaganda, not useful intelligence.

But again, I say we appoint a special prosecutor and uncover the truth. Then we will know exactly what the results of torture were and are and exactly who condoned them.

Excellent video. Jon Stewart is a coward.

#126 and #130 excellent posts.

The current discussion on human rights has no bearing in WW2 whatsoever. I think most everyone realizes the evil that was trying to permeated the world then.

As for "torture" now, let's use some perspective.
1.) Obviously torture is morally wrong, and that is not American. I think most of the other people who have gone to fight would agree that our values are what we are fighting for, we don't need to cheat to win!

2.) They are either prisoners of war and we can legally hold them without evidence or; They are civilians and we are using the wrong body i.e. the armed forces to act as a giant police force. None of my military training ever involved miranda rights or collecting evidence. Lets just call it what it is. we'll establish some democracies and set the jihadists free.

and remember...
No two countries with a Mcdonalds have ever fought a declared war against one another.

Killing 100,000 people is never right

#137 -- It's obvious that you do NOT regularly watch/listen to Bill O or Rush; if you did you would know what you say is false.

rhowk in post #97 is worried because he has yet to see any evidence that torture, by which he means to include waterboarding, “has produced actionable intelligence that save lives in theater”. Should we assume that he has seen evidence for saving lives at home? Or, perhaps he has seen no evidence of anything at all?

He should be applauded, though, for at least suggesting that he would rely on evidence. In post #28, he says,

>>Waterboarding is torture, it is illegal under US and International Law, and it does no good and in fact harms the US and its goals abroad. … Don’t believe me read this:” and provides two citations. Really?! So I checked. Neither link mentions waterboarding.

In fact, I’ve also followed this issue by reading every law on the subject that I could get, and not a single law on the treatment of prisoners or detainees, or on conduct in war, mentions waterboarding or even the use of water, much less bans it. This applies to the Geneva Accords down to the Torture Act of 2000. So let rhowk come forward with his evidence that waterboarding is torture, because without evidence everywhere that he writes about complicity in torture is wildly and irresponsibly unsupported. Cite for us an applicable law that even uses the word waterboarding or water anything.

rhowk ends #28 with, “We are a nation of laws and that is our greatest strength.” That’s the lawyers’ cliché, but perhaps morality trumps the law. In the rhowk world, though, the laws are what he alleges them to be. “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” Humpty Dumpty, Alice in Wonderland.

Torture is having to watch Jon Stewart, who is prone to say things that, by his own admission, are “lacking in quickness and keenness of mind”. (Random House definition for a word that jams the spam filter.) Nevertheless, he, too, deserves applause, not just for apologizing for defaming his country, but for admitting that the use of the atomic bomb was justified. Most of Bill Whittle’s pro-bomb argument in the video was an argument that the end justified the means. This is the same argument that rhowk and the rest of the lefties use to criticize waterboarding. The right wing, equally challenged and just bubbling over with organized morality, takes the bait to argue that the waterboarding ends do justify the means. When do the ends justify the means?

Examine the position of the ban-the-bombers closely and you’ll find that they are not against mass killing. The number of deaths in Japan from fire bombing most likely exceeded those from the atomic bombs. Firebombing in Tokyo alone was about the same order of magnitude as the number killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. But where’s the left wing stink about fire bombing? What this mentally challenged clique finds objectionable is the efficiency of the killing, not the fact of it. Killing 100,000 with one bomb is immoral; kill them with 10,000 bombs and, whew, that’s OK. It’s the mushroom cloud that bothers them. What they actually object to is the tremendous power of the U.S., and their personal lack of control over it.

War was forced on us. The means to end it are an efficiency.

The atomic bombing has done much good. First, it brought WWII to an abrupt end, saving perhaps millions of lives. Second, it has put an end to the morally troublesome strategic bombing, notwithstanding Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s puny efforts and the intentions of Iran and North Korea. We have much more efficient city busters now, the H-bombs, and they are safely in deep reserve. Because of this change exacted in the nature of warfare, we now can put our technology to work in precision weapons to minimize collateral damage. And these weapons have a great future to enable us to pick off enemy, one leader or one missile at a time, at no direct risk to our troops.

The ends are absolute good.

So, if we’re not going to pick off the enemy and his weapon facilities from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and North Korea, we had better warm up our anti-missile technology, and quick. Failing that, a nuclear exchange seems inevitable. Here’s where morality trumps the law. This is why the U.S. pre-Obama retained its sovereignty. This is why we have justifiable homicide.

Our inability to cope with these modern enemies and surrogate armies of terrorists has at its core an academic confusion over diplomacy and war. Diplomacy is used by these enemies to buy time, and the West foolishly encourages it. This is a centuries old tradition well-learned by the Colin Powells. It is analogous to our confusion over civil rights and combat. We accept that a combat soldier can kill without regard to victim rights, or maim in the most horrible ways, codified under simple rules of engagement. But once the victim is in custody, he acquires a raft of civil rights, according to the Supreme Court. He must suddenly be coddled.

The solution to the so-called torture debate is allow the soldier his third course of action after killing and maiming: to exact terrible and permanent pain and suffering on anyone he captures on the battlefield. Leave it to the military to weed out their sociopaths who waste time torturing for fun. Captive’s rights should begin, and minimally so, only when he is turned over to the custody of non-military personnel, especially the CIA.

Jeff writes at #145:
"The solution to the so-called torture debate is allow the soldier his third course of action after killing and maiming: to EXACT TERRIBLE AND PERMANENT PAIN AND SUFFERING ON ANYONE HE CAPTURES ON THE BATTLEFIELD. Leave it to the military to weed out their sociopaths who waste time torturing for fun. Captive’s rights should begin, and minimally so, only when he is turned over to the custody of non-military personnel, especially the CIA" (emphasis added).

This is, quite possibly, among the worst ideas I've ever heard. You're actually advocating battlefield torture. Don't try and quibble about it. Do you understand the point of the Geneva Conventions at all? The idea that we'll respect our enemies, so that they'll respect us? The idea that maybe, just maybe, we're better than those we fight? You're calling for us to sink to the lowest level of indecency; the soldier should "exact terrible and permanent pain and suffering on anyone he captures on the battlefield." Who cares if they're civilians? Who cares if they're a fourteen-year-old idiot who might be able to learn someday?
Actively calling for the abandonment of even a shred of moral decency, whether in the field of combat or not, is absolutely disgraceful. You disgrace the name of those serving in the armed forces.

#145 Too easy:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~warcrime/Japan/Yokohama/Reviews/Yokohama_Review_Asano.htm

Sets legal precedent for punishment of "water torture" which is what they called waterboarding back then.

The UN definition is more general but not less damning:

"Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."

Does waterboarding fit these parameters? Lets ask an expert:

"There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists

1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor."
Malcolm Nance
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/10/waterboarding-is-torture-perio/

I'd call that fairly definitive. Of course our penal code says nothing about murder including throwing someone in a vat of acid. But if you throw someone in a vat of acid, I think most people would consider that murder, and you would fry just the same.

You have two choices now, impugn Malcolm Nance's authority or integrity, or show a greater authority to nullify his argument. You could also try the same with Matthew Alexander, Ali Soufan, Col Stuart Herrington, John McCain, etc. etc.

But I forgot you don't believe in the rule of law, in fact Morality trumps Law in your world.

Ok simple question: whose Morality? Would that be Catholic Morality, Lutheran, Jewish, Islamic(heaven forbid!)? Maybe there could be a common morality that all these and other different faiths could abide by and agree to be governed by... sure and maybe we could call them, laws!

Point being is that you really don't think morality trumps law, you just think YOUR morality SHOULD trump the Law. Good luck! Find yourself a nice Ayn Rand island and live there with all of your superior buddies and your individual superior moralities and see how long you last. I give it two weeks tops.

Or you could go live in a country where morality trumps law all the time! Places like Iran, Zimbabwe, North Korea. Problem is their morality may not match yours, too bad.

No one likes lawyers until they need one, same with the law until they are offended.

The weight is still sitting there to be lifted. You have done nothing to refute the positions of those I have listed who have ACTUAL EXPERIENCE in the matter at hand. You merely have gone off in a fantasy land where we nuke first ask questions later and encourage our soldiers to disobey standing direct orders regarding treatment of prisoners.

Lift the weight, or shut the trap.

rhowk fine post(s)

Jeff,

You advocate a not so brave new world where means justify ends, and where it is not important to consider whether the chosen means are compatible with the hoped for ends, or whether the means are so corrupting of the political virtues and the moral character of the individuals and the nation who are to carry out those means that the ends become an impossibility. The further away from law force strays, the more indiscriminate it becomes, the less principled it becomes, the more self-perpetuating it becomes; the more likely it is to become an end in itself.

There is another brave, though not so new world, where citizens, soldiers and elected representatives recall that morality and justice require that means must be compatible with the ends they are intended to bring about.

Imagine, it is 1944, an American soldier is wounded in heavy fighting somewhere in south eastern Belgium. A few German soldiers engaged in the fighting surround the American who is too wounded to resist. Unfortunately for the American, the German Army failed to weed out Cpt. Fritz who happens to be a “sociopath” (he was tortured by the Red Army while retreating from Kursk) and Fritz starts to “exact terrible and permanent pain and suffering” on the American soldier right there on the battle field. Later, Fritz turns the American over to his superior Jerry, and in the basement of burned-out farm-house several German soldiers methodically torture the American for several days (a physician is present throughout). They hope to glean actionable intelligence about future allied bombing targets from the American soldier. He dies. The relevant German and American laws are such that because the American soldier was never placed in the custody of non-military German personal, he at no point had any right or legal expectation to better treatment from his captors. After Germany has lost the war the deeds of Fritz and Jerry, the physician and the other torturers are well known to American authorities. No charges can be laid against them because what they did was legal, better yet, it was the “moral” application of the most efficient means to the end of saving of German lives from allied bombers.

This is your not so brave new world.

Jon Stewart is a comedian. Cheney is a coward.

As to the bomb, I can only imagine the weight of the decision that rested with Truman when he ordered it. A tragedy that it was necessary, and a difficult issue, but I don't believe that it was ultimately a war crime.
Brinksmanship is ugly stuff - see Dr. Strangelove, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, among many others - but we haven't yet managed to blow ourselves up, so that's a plus. I'm all for developing smarter weapons.
Jeff, your demand that waterboarding be explicitly included in laws outlawing torture is myopic at best, and disingenuous at worst. Are thumbscrews explicitly outlawed? The rack? Other forms of medieval torture - er, medieval enhanced interrogation? What about the Japanese soldiers - such as Yukio Asano or General Yamashita - charged with war crimes for torture, including waterboarding, which was specifically listed among other techniques?
To pretend that there's not even a colorable argument in the public sphere that waterboarding rises to the level of torture is odd, to say the least.

I've done all the debates going on here more than once.

Couple points: first, I asked, when we looked at the Berkeley Prof. who developed the legal defense for the use of torture (forget his name; board leftists will no doubt help me since he is on their hate list), the following question: IF torture does work sometimes, and IF the lives of the entirety of humankind lay in the balance, would torture be justified THEN? The answer, of course, was no.

Very simply, you can draw a continuum from always justified to always wrong. Neither end of that continuum, in my view, stands alone. You must add context.

Now, I have recently realized, having read the best defenses of leftist politics I have ever seen--Ruskin's Unto this last, and "On the nature of the Gothic", or something like that--that the principle upon which the leftisms (there are more than one; I count two) are based, is that THE PRINCIPLE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE OUTCOME.

In this case, if you have as a principle that it is always wrong to torture, then you are led inexorably to a position in which you are willing, in principle, to sacrifice the lives of every human on the planet in order to not violate your principle. This shows quite clearly, though, that the goal is NOT to maximize actual human felicity, but rather to avoid the pain of making hard decisions. If you make the principle an end in itself, then you can just turn off your brain, and start the sorts of shouting that invariably accompany these debates.

There arises a further problem, too, in that once you have made a principle your aim, what you have actually done is make WORDS your aim, since you have detached principle from outcome, cause from effect, idea from reality.

Having done that, people like Robespierre, or Lenin can justify mass murder in the name of Virtue and Justice. They can torment, torture, and kill people based on the accident of their birth, or unwillingness to conform to someone else's conception of virtue, and do it in the name of Goodness.

With respect to the bombing of Japan, as Jeff rightly noted, we killed as many or more people with conventional incendiary bombing as with the atom bombs. This likely would have continued for quite some time, had we not made a much stronger point with the atom bombs. Nobody who studies Japanese culture can fail to grasp that surrender is simply not in their veins.

And as mentioned, there was, if memory serves, a 3 day grace period from the dropping of the first bomb, to the dropping of the second. Stewart apparently wanted a test bombing. Well, we had a test bombing, on Hiroshima. They didn't surrender. If they didn't surrender then, what POSSIBLE reason could anyone find why they would have, had we not even hit a real target?

I just watched Flags of our Fathers yesterday. If you place that scenario on Japanese soil, can anyone fail to grasp that we would have had to kill MILLIONS of people before we could get them to surrender. Maybe all of them. Maybe we would have simply destroyed all their military hardware, achieved and maintained air superiority, and quarantined them. I don't know. But we would have tried an invasion first, and it would have been ugly.

And anyone who wants to look to the Soviets as a positive thing, need to remember that they had a very pronounced tendency after World War 2 to stay in places they "liberated", like East Germany, and North Korea. They had plans to occupy Hokkaido, but Truman blocked them. There could be, to this very day, a Communist regime in Japan, just as there is in North Korea, the roots for which were laid directly after World War 2.

What is frustrating to me is people don't know these things. How many of you knew that Greece very nearly became a Communist nation? Or that Communist partisans kidnapped ten's of thousands of children, and sent them to Yugoslavia for "reeducation". Italy could have gone Communist.

One can debate the merits of one decision or another, but to do it from a perspective which fails to take into account the FACT that actions have consequences, is to fail to be an honest member of our political order.

I've done all the debates going on here more than once.

Couple points: first, I asked, when we looked at the Berkeley Prof. who developed the legal defense for the use of torture (forget his name; board leftists will no doubt help me since he is on their hate list), the following question: IF torture does work sometimes, and IF the lives of the entirety of humankind lay in the balance, would torture be justified THEN? The answer, of course, was no.

Very simply, you can draw a continuum from always justified to always wrong. Neither end of that continuum, in my view, stands alone. You must add context.

Now, I have recently realized, having read the best defenses of leftist politics I have ever seen--Ruskin's Unto this last, and "On the nature of the Gothic", or something like that--that the principle upon which the leftisms (there are more than one; I count two) are based, is that THE PRINCIPLE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE OUTCOME.

In this case, if you have as a principle that it is always wrong to torture, then you are led inexorably to a position in which you are willing, in principle, to sacrifice the lives of every human on the planet in order to not violate your principle. This shows quite clearly, though, that the goal is NOT to maximize actual human felicity, but rather to avoid the pain of making hard decisions. If you make the principle an end in itself, then you can just turn off your brain, and start the sorts of shouting that invariably accompany these debates.

There arises a further problem, too, in that once you have made a principle your aim, what you have actually done is make WORDS your aim, since you have detached principle from outcome, cause from effect, idea from reality.

Having done that, people like Robespierre, or Lenin can justify mass murder in the name of Virtue and Justice. They can torment, torture, and kill people based on the accident of their birth, or unwillingness to conform to someone else's conception of virtue, and do it in the name of Goodness.

With respect to the bombing of Japan, as Jeff rightly noted, we killed as many or more people with conventional incendiary bombing as with the atom bombs. This likely would have continued for quite some time, had we not made a much stronger point with the atom bombs. Nobody who studies Japanese culture can fail to grasp that surrender is simply not in their veins.

And as mentioned, there was, if memory serves, a 3 day grace period from the dropping of the first bomb, to the dropping of the second. Stewart apparently wanted a test bombing. Well, we had a test bombing, on Hiroshima. They didn't surrender. If they didn't surrender then, what POSSIBLE reason could anyone find why they would have, had we not even hit a real target?

I just watched Flags of our Fathers yesterday. If you place that scenario on Japanese soil, can anyone fail to grasp that we would have had to kill MILLIONS of people before we could get them to surrender. Maybe all of them. Maybe we would have simply destroyed all their military hardware, achieved and maintained air superiority, and quarantined them. I don't know. But we would have tried an invasion first, and it would have been ugly.

And anyone who wants to look to the Soviets as a positive thing, need to remember that they had a very pronounced tendency after World War 2 to stay in places they "liberated", like East Germany, and North Korea. They had plans to occupy Hokkaido, but Truman blocked them. There could be, to this very day, a Communist regime in Japan, just as there is in North Korea, the roots for which were laid directly after World War 2.

What is frustrating to me is people don't know these things. How many of you knew that Greece very nearly became a Communist nation? Or that Communist partisans kidnapped ten's of thousands of children, and sent them to Yugoslavia for "reeducation". Italy could have gone Communist.

One can debate the merits of one decision or another, but to do it from a perspective which fails to take into account the FACT that actions have consequences, is to fail to be an honest member of our political order.

Barry, you hate leftists. Got it. Suspect that your definition of leftist is anyone who disagrees with you. Got it.

For the torture part no need to indulge in wacked out slippery slope musings. Just keep reading Nance's article over and over, especially where the guy with 40 years experience in the field says:
"Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period."
"Torture. Does. Not. Work."

Maybe some light will start to creep in. Again if you can impugn his(or any of the cited sources) authority, or trump his authority with a greater one, lets see you deadlift! Meanwhile there sits the weight on the floor gathering dust, while the pro-torture folks yammer on.

Unless its a quantum argument you want to get into, then we can merrily debate millions of monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare. Or the probability of me throwing a pepsi in the air and having it turn into a sperm whale! Or is that Douglas Adams?

"IF torture does work sometimes, and IF the lives of the entirety of humankind lay in the balance, would torture be justified THEN?"
Life is not an episode of 24. Even if Justice Scalia and Cheney really, really want to keep their nice strawman dolls.

Boy that video was a bunch of crap.

I watched Stewart later recount and apologize for the statement, a statement made in the heat of a debate. We've all done that. Come on.

Afterburner dude uses the one statement as a platform to slander Stewart and basically make him out to be an idiot.

Truman wasn't a war criminal. Obviously he felt that he had to drop the nuclear bomb. But, he thought about it until his dying days.

The one statement by Stewart doesn't change the fact that the torture perpetuated by the Bush administration should be analyzed for criminal action. There was countless intelligence to suggest that the extreme interrogation techniques didn't work.

The fact is that narrow minded people do the sort of thing that Afterburner does all the time. The latch on to one misstep, one faulty statement, instead of looking at the whole picture. It's maddening. Hannity does it. Orielly does it.

If Crossfit teaches anything it's that we must look at the bigger picture. Take everything in context. Don't spend your time doing iso on your pecs when it doesn't make you more fit.

Rhowk: I hate people who substitute insult for content based discussions, who change the subject when confronted with a strong argument, and who do everything within their power to muddy the waters for purely partisan purposes. To the extent that these trait virtually define Leftists, your point is quite accurate.

The discussion: What you have provided is a link from one individual stating that waterboarding is torture and that torture does not work.

First off, whether waterboarding is torture is, to me, a legal question, not an ethical one. Legally, lawyers determine what constitutes crime and what doesn't. Legally, however, Bush had a strong pretext for what he did, so there can be no question that any SUBSTANTIVE objections are moral. There can also be no question that this topic is ripe with potential for political theater and leftist propaganda. Bush will never be charged with anything, but our spineless, corrupt media will fill the waves with innuendo as long as they can.

Now, your guy is speaking as someone commenting on general policy. Personally, I am in no way opposed to the ban on torture, nor do I have a compelling reason to believe it is often counterproductive, as many have said. As a general rule, we should not use it.

But this is different than saying that Bush broke the law, or that he acted in bad faith. Everyone--Democrat and Republican--was scared after 9/11. Gun and Cipro sales were through the roof. People were talking about moving to Australia or somewhere else far away. We had anthrax attacks.

Moreover, the CIA got caught with its pants down. They didn't have the networks in place to get us the information we needed. This likely had much to do with the risk aversion that decades of microscrutiny bred in that agency.

They needed a lot of information, and they needed it fast. And from what I understand, some of the intel they got was in fact accurate. I have never seen ANYONE claim that no person, ever, in the history of human civilization has not produced information under torture they would not otherwise have produced. This would be a laughable claim. We train our Spec Op folks to resist torture for the very reason that it can and DOES work, at times.

The ticking time bomb is a valid scenario. If we needed, for example, a combination to something, and we had compelling reason to believe someone had it, then we would run the risk neither of false information--we could test it--nor of getting the wrong person. If, for reasons of moral grandiosity, we chose not to use torture, and if the other methods failed, and people were killed, then that blood, too, would be on our hands.

And I don't see how any reasoning, sentient human being can claim that that scenario is impossible. It's unpleasant, certainly--and no doubt unlikely--but it's possible. One of the regular posters on this board, for example, told me of a guy they got, that they thought had intel on an impending attack, but the ROE dictated he be released. He blew himself and about 10 others up less than a week later. He was a ticking timebomb, and he went off.

Leftists like to pretend we live in a sanitized world where all we have to do is act like we want others to, and they will cooperate, and we will all get to sing Kumbaya in enchanted circles.

But the reality is that human history is a nasty, sordid business, and that we only enjoy the relative peace and freedom we do today because MEN like the soldiers over seas today did unpleasant things they didn't want to do, because they had to be done.

I will repeat my question: Do you want to argue that no use of torture, ever in the history of the human race has yielded information more efficiently than other available methods? Yes, or no. This is a simple question. The logic behind your position dictates that your answer is that, yes, you do want to make that argument, because you have a link to a man with forty years experience, who agrees with your claim.

Empirically, of course, we could possibly find out if he would agree with that statement, too, or if you have pulled more from him that he was actually offering.

So the first question is a pragmatic one: over and above ethical considerations, are there ANY cases in which it works? I believe there are. For those who disagree, it is a consistent position from which to reject all use of torture. Again, this is question amenable to empirical data. And if that data unmistakeably leads to the conclusion that never, ever, in no cases since the beginning of the world, or any conceivable future scenario could it work, then I will agree it should always be banned.

Secondly, if one accepts in principle, that sometimes it does work--some piece of information needed to save lives is extracted quickly and accurately--then the question becomes one of scale. What scenarios warrant its use? This is the legal question that Bush got answered.

They you have the moral question: at what point do the ends justify the means? Does saving one life warrant it? 100? 1000? There can be no single answer to this, but rather a series of answers created in the process of integrating general principles like not harming others, with concrete, specific situations.

Finally, you have the other pragmatic question of the effects of the use of torture on your overall policy. If, for example, we were trying to pacify Iraq, and if the use of torture was counterproductive to that goal, then even if we were getting good information, the means was not useful.

As I stated, my goal in all these discussion is to integrate as well as possible general principles with specific situations. No principle can be applied by a sincere person without looking to the actual outcomes achieved. Leftists want us to disarm, to gain peace, but the end result will be more war, and a loss of our liberty. If the principle is peace, then they are acting as hypocrites.

This is why the aggressive and consistent use of reason is to Leftist politics as water to the wicked witch of the West.

I will add, that one must remember that the point of viral Leftism is simply the acquisition and maintenance of power. The system is based upon careful and constant deception. There is always a cloak behind which the malignancy hides. In one case, you might have the supposed indignities of Capitalism, to which they offer the solution (universal slavery). Or the hideous effect of unregulated commerce on the environment, to which they offer the solution (universal slavery).

Or possibly the problems of race, to which they offer the solution (universal slavery).

Or, in this case, they are going to keep America on the moral high ground and prevent ANY future use of torture, because we just aren't like that. And in the upkeep of this principle, they are willing to make ANY sacrifice. Obama would much rather see Americans murdered by released Gitmo detainees than see the continued success of one of Bush's policies.

You people all know most of these guys are coldblooded murderers. Hundreds of people have been killed by past detainees. Fathers, sons, Daughters, wives, husbands: blown to pieces, so Democrats could fan outrage against Republicans.

There is no end game other than naked power. Everything else is a smokescreen.

By the way: does anyone know if Obama kept on Bush's federal attorneys? You know, the ones fired by the first HISPANIC Attorney General?

Five gets you ten, no. In fact, there is no reason not to assume the political purging in all areas of the government is as massive as can be kept under wraps by a very compliant media and press.

It looks pretty clear that the person responsible for posting the political link is using the bit of power they have to influence there beliefs (which appears to be mostly conservative ideals). There are good conservative ideals out there that deserve more attention than the link that was posted. You guys are smarter than that!

It looks pretty clear that the person responsible for posting the political link is using the bit of power they have to influence there beliefs (which appears to be mostly conservative ideals). There are good conservative ideals out there that deserve more attention than the link that was posted. You guys are smarter than that!

Barry, calm down and look at the facts.

Nance is one of many citations, all of whom have tremendous actual boots on the ground experience with interrogation and torture. All of whom say torture should not be used and is in FACT conterproductive. Not in some theoretical fantasyland of fictional "24" television episode. More like "don't drink wood alcohol, it will kill you." practicality. Now you may argue that on some quantum probable level drinking wood alcohol will not kill you and MAY in fact cure you of diahrea, so in some cases it would be good to drink wood alcohol. And while on a quantum level you might be theoretically right, that there is a infinitesimally small probability that the wood alcohol will not kill you and cure your diahrea, in the real world that we live in your argument would be considered very very dumb and you would at least go blind by following it.

Matthew Alexander, Ali Soufan, Col Stuart Herrington, John McCain Google them and torture. Read what they have to say about the subject. They don't talk nonsensical if then scenarios. They talk about their real world ACTUAL experiences that saved lives.

All the evidence we now have is that the good intelligence was gleaned from hardened terrorists using techniques not involving torture. The torture was done after to try and gain false confessions about Iraq and Al Queda to justify the invasion after the WMD lies fell through.

I'm sorry that 15% of the detainees your boy Bush let go went back to terrorism. Maybe if he had used good intelligence, or intelligence period that would not have happened.

Either way you have not provided any evidence, but certainly lots of type, to refute what Matthew Alexander, Ali Soufan, Col Stuart Herrington, John McCain, and many many others have said. They have dealt with actual ticking timebomb scenarios. Here is Matthew Alexanders' take on it:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/torture-it-probably-killed-more-americans-than-911-1674396.html

You talk a lot but the weight is still on the ground.

Either lift it, or man up and admit your are wrong.

John,

Why not offer a specific rather than a general commentary? If the situation is so clear to you, make it clear to the rest of us what you believe, why, and how that relates to the topic of the day.

More generally, it occurred to me to point out that Truman was a Democrat. He was of the generation of Democrats who actually loved America, even though they did have many traitors in their midst even then, like Alger Hiss and Harry Hopkins.

Actually, I'm interrupting myself, but everyone should know about the Venona Project. Here is one link: http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2000/november_2000_4.html

The guy that chaired the conference that created the UN? Spy. The guy that gave Poland to the Soviets? Spy.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: spy. Federal agents, even then, knew that his wife, brother and sister-in-law were Communists. They knew he regularly donated money to the Communist Party.

They close this piece with a quote from the book, which I own, but have not had time to read:

"For a long time," the authors explain, "it has been an article of faith among apologists of the Left that Communist Party members were loyal citizens merely engaged in dissent and only bent on reform of the American system. Venona proves the opposite—their loyalty was to the Soviet Union, and many of the Party’s leadership and some of the hard-core membership served as spies in the Soviet cause. Venona and other recently available materials help explain why American Communists betrayed their democratic country to a totalitarian dictatorship."

I propose a neologism. Truman was a Democrat. Members of the People's (demos) Party since then we can call "Neocrats".

And I suggest we heap the same dismissive scorn upon them which they have been lavishing on "neocons" since they found out some of those in their midst (remember, neocons were formerly leftists) were not fully pliable to their absurd and murderous agendas.

Regarding Oppenheimer:

"In a seminar at the Woodrow Wilson Institute on May 20th, 2009, and based on an extensive analysis of the Vassiliev notebooks taken from the KGB archives, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev confirmed that Oppenheimer never was involved in espionage for the Soviet Union. The KGB tried repeatedly to recruit him, but never was successful. Oppenheimer did not betray the United States. In addition, he had several persons removed from the Manhattan project who had sympathies to the Soviet Union. See the book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, Yale University Press, 2009 by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev with translations by Philip Redko and Steven Shabad." - Wikipedia article for J. Robert Oppenheimer

Rhowk,

Let's make this simple. Are you arguing that the potential benefit of torture is so small that for all intents and purposes it NEVER works, and that there are no scenarios in which it could work?

I have not disputed that this is possible. I have merely stated this is a matter for empirical verification. If you are saying this, then your position is consistent.

What, if anything, would cause you to change your mind? For example, if the CIA came forward with a lot of new intel that WAS gathered with waterboarding, that led to prevented attacks? Would that do it?

My sense is that it would not, and that you are one of these people who would see the world die prior to violating the Party line on this particular issue. I could be wrong.

And I don't have to argue that Bush made the right decision, either in invading Iraq, or creating a climate in which--within a legal framework created by John Cho--torture was an OPTION.

All I have to argue is that he acted in good faith to perform the task of defending our nation, with which we appointed him. It might be that he made an error in authorizing torture, but we had just lost 3,000 lives.

What makes me sick, is that the very same Leftists who want to claim the moral high ground here, are the same ones who wanted to abandon Iraq the second things got dicey, no matter how many 100's of thousands of lives were lost.

They are same Leftists who have for all intents and purposes regulated the CIA out of the human intelligence business, which is why we didn't have the information we needed, when we needed it.

They are the same leftists who abandoned South Vietnam to a fate of torture--massive, state sponsored, systematic, years long torture--and mass murder. Why was it OK when they did it, but not OK for us?

They are the same leftists who even now want to close Guantanomo Bay: you know, your "boy". Bush let a few out. Comrade Obama wants to let them all out, then presumably go smoke a few stogies with the misunderstood Castro brothers.

I personally believe torture works in some cases. I am willing to accept I may be wrong about that. However, I will not accept the demonization of Bush by people who have no principles whatsoever upon which they will allow themselves to be judged, other than the relentless cowardice with which they allow enemy nations to force their agendas on us.

The Woodrow Wilson Institute? Wikipedia?

Here is what the article says: "In 1994, a year before the deciphered Venona cables were released, the man in charge of Soviet spying on America’s atom bomb project revealed that Oppenheimer had supplied the Soviets with classified reports on atom bomb development."

Am I correct in assuming, then, that you do agree that Alger Hiss and Harry Hopkins--both high level men in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations--were Soviet agents?

Actually, here you go: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html

"President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists."

This comment was deleted from the report issued to the media. Why the New York Times allowed it through is beyond me. Maybe they do care about doing their jobs right sometimes.

More:

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday."

And:

"Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Mr. Bush, said on Fox News Sunday last weekend that “the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in a separate interview with Fox, endorsed that conclusion and said he has asked the C.I.A. to declassify memos detailing the gains from the harsh interrogations."

As I've been saying, the issue of efficacy is an empirical one. The issue of morality is a philosophical one.

And with respect to that latter issue, my thought experiment is perfectly relevant. What would it take to make torture more moral than the alternative, if we did establish that it does, sometimes, in situations we can verify empirically, work?

To make it clear, would torture of a guilty man be worth it, if it saved the torture of a 100 innocent men? Please remember that for quite some time Al Queda terrorists in Iraq were drilling holes in people elbows and knees, raping and killing their families in front of the fathers, using electrical shocks, and everything else they could think of.

These are the people we are discussing.

Yes Wikipedia

Ok, so the quote from your article says Oppenheimer was a spy (the quote taken from the article, which you yourself said you haven't read). The quote from mine says he wasn't. Whose article is right? I guess we'll never know.

I would suspect there will remain ambiguity, but if you look even cursorily at the feverish efforts of Democrats to defend Hiss--even after he was caught with incontrovertible evidence--then you know that this discussion will be conditioned by P.R. considerations.

One of the primary reasons Leftists HATED Richard Nixon from the mid-50's onward, was he was the one who outed Hiss, some 15 years after the initial allegations were brought forward by Whittaker Chambers.

One must understand that the goal of the Communist International was ALWAYS the overthrow of the democracies in which they were allowed to exist. The Communist Party of the USA was a part of the Comintern. Oppenheimer was surrounded my members, and donated to it quite often financially.

Take that fact, an understanding of Communist mind tricks (the clever lie is perhaps the defining virtue of the Communist), and the word of a former Soviet agent who was clearly in a position to know--plus Venona intercepts indicating at a minimum that Oppenheimer had a Code name, and they were actively trying to recruit him--and you have VERY probable cause to suspect he did in fact betray his country, even in the course of serving it.

These ideologies are insane. They literally want to kill every flower, destroy every independent thought, and impoverish and enslave all of humankind. No other reading of Communist history is, to my mind, possible. China is looking much more like Fascist nation, now, it is combination of totalitarian rule, and Capitalism (and growing nationalism), but they are still officially Communist.

And we might be fighting a war soon with the result of Truman's failure to let McArthur fight that war to the logical end.

I would be interested to learn, too, who made the decision to let the Soviets control North Korea. Was it Roosevelt? Was Hopkins involved?

Finally Barry, After like two pages of nonsensical theoretical ravings, you take a little tug at the bar.

Hayden's views are suspect at best since he is widely viewed as a political animal and has little to no experience in the field. "Five Deferment" Cheney is a blowhard coward who has never put his life on the line or in harms way for his country. Furthermore he has either lied and or been wrong about every single important issue in recent history and comes nowhere close in terms of honor experience, integrity, and courage to standing up to someone like John McCain or any of the other people I have cited. Blair I don't know and will have to look up. Still how does it feel to deal with facts and actual citations Barry? Are you now actually going to try and refute the people I have cited Barry? Or will you just do some more tangential rantings about how lefties put fluoride in the water and are projecting subliminal mind control waves through the internets?

The next time your feel the urge to regurgitate twenty paragraphs of Rush speak just write:

"Bad lefty, Bad lefty, lefty lefty Bad Bad!"

We'll get the gist and it'll cut down on the carpal tunnel.

Oh and here's the rest of the Quote from Blair which completely destroys one part of your argument:

"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means," Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. "The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

and another part which I respectfully disagree with, but that supports another part of your argument:

"I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past," he wrote, "but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given."

Fairly immature debate tactics to not quote the parts you don't like Barry!

"Take..the word of a former Soviet agent who was clearly in a position to know"

So Communists are evil, but we should take their word as proof. Wouldn't a better plan be for a spy to plant misinformation in order to make a country turn on its own and make it so no one trusted their friends and neighbors?

rhowk #147,

You spent over 500 words evading the challenge. You have confirmed, as others before you, that Waterboarding is not specifically banned in any law. Yet you assume your condemnation of its practice under the rubric that we are a nation ruled by law. Astounding.

That waterboarding is torture is a politically correct invention. That torture produces no results is a politically correct justification.

Everything that is politically correct is otherwise incorrect - by definition. Political correctness is the unsymmetrical logic owned by the left. Your argument that any number of people subscribe to this illogic elevated to propaganda is unquestionable and quite unpersuasive.

So John McCain--someone who was tortured--is being politically correct:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/20/mccain-on-mohammed-waterb_n_189028.html

Nick #146,

Your perceptiveness is amazing. And I thought I was being subtle. You've caught me; I can't quibble.

If we honor the Geneva accords, our enemy will return the respect. Why, there's just no limit to political correctness, is there?

Actually, I am opposed to torture, and would ban it off the battlefield, if someone could ever define it all well enough. But in theatre, it's best left to the military to regulate. And, in general, I support the Geneva accords, where they apply. But let's not make silly, over-the-top claims about these principles.

Prole #148,

“Means justify ends”? Is this Canadian?

rhoak #147,

Nance says, “Waterboarding … has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator.” He'd be finished if he made that admission in court or in a rational debate.

So, Mr. Nance, it doesn't violate the letter of the law when used on our own trainees? When used on a trainee, do you claim it is not prolonged? Or do you claim that it is not severe?

Mr. Nance, are you not saying that one set of rules for waterboarding exists for detainees and another set for trainees?

Mr. Nance, are you not saying that a problem arises with waterboarding only when it is abused?

Mr. Nance, why don't you recommend using waterboarding up to the training level?

Mr. Nance, aren't you saying that sometimes waterboarding is torture and sometimes it is not?

Jeff writes at 172:
"If we honor the Geneva accords, our enemy will return the respect. Why, there's just no limit to political correctness, is there?"
You're right; let's let terrorists be our moral guideposts. That sounds like a great plan.
"Actually, I am opposed to torture, and would ban it off the battlefield, if someone could ever define it all well enough."
18 USC s 2340 seems to fit (available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_113C.html):

"(1) 'torture' means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control"
(2) 'severe mental pain or suffering' means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from...
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death..."

It seems to me that waterboarding fits both B and C. It makes you think - instinctively and apart from any knowledge you might have of the situation - that you are dying. This seems a "profound disruption" of the senses, and I recall one commentator saying that, while being waterboarded, he would have sold his children to make it stop. That seems to rise to the level of a disruption of personality, no? The fact that the victim also believes that they are dying - then and there - arguably fits C, since it triggers an instinctive belief that death is imminent.
In any case, we have a law that bans torture. Yet why are you arguing that we shouldn't follow it? Orhave we already conceded the rule of law to the vicissitudes of your own personal "morality"? Barry, take note - this seems to be a power grab of true "leftist" fashion.

#170 Jeff kinda nutty posts, as I posted before there are no specific laws prohibiting you from throwing someone in a vat of acid. Yet you would be charged with murder if you did so because that would fall under the category of murder. Just like waterboarding falls under the category of torture in both US and International Law. I don't know what your educational background is, but your lack of ability to categorize and extrapolate tells me you were not well served.

As for your railings against Mr. Nance, well I just don't know what to say, you against the SERE instructors I guess! Have fun on whatever planet you call home!

Oh brother...

rhoak #178,

I, too, perceive an inability to categorize or extrapolate properly.

As you note, we don’t have laws for every means of murder. What you fail to recognize is that we don’t have laws peculiar to any means of murder. You could have used guns instead of a vat of acid. That kind of thing is easily handled in law. All that had to be done was insert in Nick’s quotation at #177 “including but not limited to waterboarding”. That was not done. Why?

Or sleep deprivation, the next bogey man. Or tearing up your Koran. Or putting pork in your chow. Or lousing up your internal clock. The intent of Congress was to be vague, to give lip service to our torture policy.

The difference in structure between murder and torture laws is that murder exists only when a specific, measurable event exists, or exists to a moral certainty: death. The problem is that torture statutes are loaded with subjective and argumentative terms like “severe”, “prolonged”, “profoundly”, even “imminent”, all coupled with “intent” or “calculated”. These require interpretation, as you, Nance, and the Bush administration have demonstrated.

You call my hypothetical questions to Mr. Nance “railings”. Regardless of your educational background, that is a miscategorization and an illogical extrapolation. A railing is a harsh criticism. The only criticism I made of him was to use his own words politely to defeat his argument. Nance admits that waterboarding is sometimes not torture.

rhowk, in a spasmodic fit of the sort of self righteousness that makes Leftism more an aesthetic pursuit than anything approaching an honest desire for truth: "Fairly immature debate tactics to not quote the parts you don't like Barry!"

Yo, pot, it's the kettle. Let me repaste the FIRST quote from that article. You know, the one I intended you not to miss, and the one I KNEW--absolutely, postively KNEW you would ignore was this: "President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists."

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR.

You ignored my points about Gitmo.

You ducked my question as to what would constitute evidence that torture works.

You ignored my point that what Bush did was clearly defensible from a legal perspective.

You refuse to engage in any sort of comment on what WOULD, for you, constitute a use of torture in which that method was better, ethically, than the alternative.

I will add that many readers of this forum have been waterboarded. Many or most pilots, in SERE, and many or most Spec. Op's types go through waterboarding. I have talked with some of them about it.

What you have to know about waterboarding is that while the intent is to create a feeling that you are going to die--which is by design intensely unpleasant--the second it lets up, you are back to normal. This is not the case if someone puts a blowtorch to your face, or puts a 3/4" drill bit through your elbow, or kills your family in front of you.

If the question is: was what Bush did legal? I think the answer is clearly yes, particularly since Congress gave him a green light, including Nancy Pelosi. It is the heighth of hypocrisy, now, to repudiate what was authorized, then. To pretend Dem's weren't just as worried as everyone else.

I of course expect no less, though, from people whose only concern in life is maintaining power through disingenuous attacks on their opponents.

Rhowk,

Why don't you man up and admit you just stepped on your privates in a public forum? You accused me of something you were manifestly guilty of yourself, and did so in the course of ignoring virtually every argument I made for which you had no response.

This will go on two more days, and I can stomach a limitless amount of insult and abuse, provided I buy thereby an opportunity to show dishonest power mongering for what it is.

You could care less about those detainees, just as you could have cared less about the widespread torture that would have attended our failure in Iraq, or for that matter the torture that happened under Saddam Hussein, or which is going on now in the Palestinian Authority, North Korea, China, and Iran.

This is nothing more than an opportunity to muddy the waters with pseudorighteous, intellectually incoherent attacks on people who are your moral and spiritual superiors.

Jeff,

Hypothetical answers to hypothetical questions.

Counsellor Glassman: "So, Mr. Nance, it doesn't violate the letter of the law when used on our own trainees? When used on a trainee, do you claim it is not prolonged? Or do you claim that it is not severe?"

If you think it makes any sense whatsoever to include: "including but not limited to waterboarding
Mr. Nance: It is my opinion that when when a trainee is subjected to waterboarding in the course of training at the Evasion, Resistance and Escape School it is not "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering" and that the relationship of "custody or physical control" within the meaning given to those terms in 18 USC s 2340.

Councellor Glassman: "Mr. Nance, are you not saying that one set of rules for waterboarding exists for detainees and another set for trainees?"

Mr. Nance: No I am saying that one set of rules exists, and that the Evasion, Resistance and Escape School obeys those rules so as not to commit torture.

Counsellor Glassman: "Mr. Nance, are you not saying that a problem arises with waterboarding only when it is abused?"

Mr. Nance: I am saying that "a problem arises with waterboarding" when it constitutes torture within the meaning of 18 USC s 2340, and that when it is carried out for the purposes of interrogation it will almost always constitute torture.

Counsellor Glassman: "Mr. Nance, why don't you recommend using waterboarding up to the training level?"

Mr. Nance: It cannot be used "up to the training level" in the course of interrogating a terror suspect because in the training situation, the person being water boarded is not in the custody and control of the Evasion, Resistance and Escape School. There is no legal or physical compulsion on a student in the Evasion, Resistance and Escape School to undergo the training. He or she can walk away or refuse to undergo the training.

Counsellor Glassman: Mr. Nance, aren't you saying that sometimes waterboarding is torture and sometimes it is not?

Mr. Nance: No, I'm saying that when waterboarding has the attributes of the acts described in 18 USC s 2340 it is torture, and when it does not, it does not. My understanding of the law and of real life interrogation practices is that when waterboarding occurs in the course of interrogating terror suspects or enemy soldiers, it constitutes torture.

Barry,

How/when did congress approve the use of torture?

m/29/5'11/170

press
125*3

12-7-6@95#

D.T.
5rds
12 deadlift 155#
9 hang power cleans 155#
6 push jerk 155#

14:13

Prole #182,

Mr. Nance, in the next line of questions we will establish that a trainee at the school you mention, which is actually known as SERE for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, appears under temporary duty orders, and that it is not voluntary under penalty of dismissal from his chosen branch of service. Moreover, we will establish that SERE trainers have the power to arrest and restrain a trainee against his will at any time, and indeed that this is done as a part of the exercises. We will establish that this is not authority under the mere color of law but more, actual authority. If you dispute these facts, we have expert witnesses ready to testify. They will testify that realism is the essence of this training, and that sometimes trainers must be more abusive to trainees than to real subjects to compensate for the trainee’s knowledge that the method does not subject him to any permanent harm. Do you concede that these facts are correct? Ah, I see your attorney has agreed to these concessions.

So, Mr. Nance, please explain how the waterboarding at SERE is intended to induce in the trainee less of a response than what waterboarding is intended to induce when practiced on an enemy? What specifically is done in training that gives evidence to your claim that it induces less of a response? Is something done in training that signals waterboarder intent to the trainee?

Mr. Nance, in your response you rely on waterboarding being used in training for a purpose other than for interrogation, and rely on the statute for that claim. Please show us where in the statute interrogation is mentioned or implied. Did you not then rely on a phantom rule regarding interrogation to respond whether waterboarding sometimes was and sometimes was not torture?

Mr. Nance, you said, “My understanding of the law and of real life interrogation practices is that when waterboarding occurs in the course of interrogating terror suspects or enemy soldiers, it constitutes torture.” Is it not true that this statement of yours implies that when used for another purpose than the one you state, that waterboarding is not torture? Have you not just admitted once again, as you did in your paper, that waterboarding is sometimes not torture? Do you not concede that your argument is even weaker in consideration of the fact that the statute makes no reference, express or implied, to interrogation?

The witness is excused.

Your honor, in light of the fact that the Left has failed to establish a prima facie case that waterboarding is always torture, and indeed has contradicted that position with its own witness, we request the court direct a verdict that sometimes waterboarding is not torture.

Barry,

Stop frothing at the Mouth! I actually gave you credit for finally posting an solid reference that partially supported your case! Adm Denis Blair stated that the small value gleaned from torture was VASTLY outweighed by the cost of using it, paraphrasing here.

My thesis is/was very simple and is stolen directly from Nance:

Water boarding is torture. Torture does not work, is counterproductive and should not be used.

Blair would seem to contradict Nance as whether torture works in getting good info, which would support your pro-torture stance. Blair goes on to say that any benefits from torture are vastly outweighed by the damage they cause to the nation.
Which would completely support Nance's position. So you have two authorities with seemingly contradicting positions on one point and in total agreement on the other.

I gave you credit for this Barry! Do you even bother to read any more? Or are you in such a mad bull rush to spew regurgitated Rush hatred of Dems, lefties and anyone else that disagrees with you that reading is just not possible?

Anyway, Blair slightly contradicts Nance but in no way disproves his, nor Alexander nor any of the other men whose positions I have cited. You need to go a lot further than sophistry and conjecture to do that.

I'll state it one more time in the hope that it gets through:

Impugn the authority of the sources cited or cite an authority that trumps theirs.

Blair was a partial start, but you can't just cherry pick partial quotes. But you were heading in the right direction! See you don't have to write twenty pages about how lefties are killing babies and causing traffic jams, and whatever. Just stick to the argument at hand Barry! Its not that hard, and who knows you might even find that you like reasonable structured discourse, and you won't have to type so much nonsense!

As to answering all of your crazy if then scenarios, sorry, outside of the scope of my argument and tangential to the issue at hand. You want to talk about Vietnam, and the firing of attorneys go ahead. Why you keep changing the subject, and throwing insults around I don't know. Oh wait...

"I hate people who substitute insult for content based discussions, who change the subject when confronted with a strong argument, and who do everything within their power to muddy the waters for purely partisan purposes."

Your self loathing must be both acute and profound.

Jeff:

Glassman: So, Mr. Nance, please explain how the waterboarding at SERE is intended to induce in the trainee less of a response than what waterboarding is intended to induce when practiced on an enemy? What specifically is done in training that gives evidence to your claim that it induces less of a response? Is something done in training that signals waterboarder intent to the trainee?

Nance: I will refer you to the testimony given by Dr. Jerald Ogrisseg, the former head of Psychological Services for the Air Force SERE School, before the Senate Committee on Armed Services (June 17 and September 25, 2008). I will quote at length from his testimony now, but ask that the entirety of his testimony be entered in the record.

“There are a number of important differences between SERE school and real world interrogations that would limit my conclusions to the SERE school training populations. I will review those differences that I am aware of below:

1. PREVIOUS LEVEL OF FUNCTIONING AND DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS. Military SERE training students are screened multiple times prior to participating in training to ensure that they are physically and psychologically healthy. They get screened prior to entering the service to ensure that they don't have certain disorders… Most SERE schools also mandate that students complete screening questionnaires after they arrive at SERE school as a final safety check and for additional help or interventions if needed, to include being restricted from experiencing particular training procedures….

2. PURPOSE OF THE EXPERIENCE. SERE resistance training instruction is provided to increase the survivability, enhance the resistance capabilities of the students, and increase their confidence in their abilities to resist and survive….. Real world interrogation and detention facilities exist to elicit information from the enemy that will be used to shape future and ongoing military operations and provide our troops with tactical, operational, and strategic advantages. As such, the detention environment is another form of the conflict between adversaries. Unlike in SERE training where the goal is not to defeat the student, the real world interrogator wants to win…..

3. RISK MANAGEMENT OVERSIGHT FUNCTIONS. Within the SERE training environment, there are multiple levels of oversight mechanisms in place to reinforce the purpose of the training and the training objectives, and to prevent harmful behavioral drift….. Unlike the training environment, remotivating detainees to succeed is not an oversight responsibility or concern. While it is U.S. policy to have physical and mental health services available to detainees, it is not ethical to have these services provided by practitioners serving other roles within the detention environment.

4. PROPENSITY FOR MORAL DISENGAGEMENT. Moral disengagement is a term that refers to the attitude changes that allow someone to violate their internal moral standards and act in more aggressive and reprehensible ways. As part of the risk management oversight role, SERE psychologists train the resistance training staff on attitudinal and behavioral signs of moral disengagement, monitor the instructors for signs of moral disengagement, and then intervene if necessary to bring instructors back in line within the spirit of training operational instructions. A significant barrier to moral disengagement is removed in the transition from SERE training to real world detention operations. While moral disengagement can still occur in a SERE resistance training setting (which is why the oversight mechanisms are in place), the instructors are still dealing with their own country personnel. When dealing with non-country personnel, as in the case of detainee handling, there is greater risk of dehumanization of these personnel, and thus a greater likelihood of worse treatment that exceeds the limits of operational instructions.

5. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND OPERATIONAL DEBRIEFINGS. As I described in my July 24, 2002 memo to Lieutenant Colonel Baumgartner, SERE training students receive several training debriefs that serve to reinforce training objectives and decrease the students' risk of developing psychological disorders by normalizing the students' training experiences and reactions. These debriefings are obviously not available to real world detainees like they are to our students.

6. ``VOLUNTARY'' NATURE OF TRAINING. SERE training, to an extent, is a voluntary experience. Students can withdraw from training. It is not entirely voluntary, in thatcompleting training is a job requirement for many military specialties. Failing to complete training can result in administrative consequences, disqualification from worldwide deployment, and possibly retraining into a different career specialty if students aren't ultimately able to complete training. Nonetheless, students may terminate the training experience if they desire to.Being a detainee, like being incarcerated in the criminal prison system, is not voluntary. Detainees cannot choose to withdraw from their detention.

7. LIMITED DURATION OF THE EXPERIENCE. Limited duration of the experience.The SERE training experience is of limited duration and has defined starting and ending points. While the actual duration of training events may vary depending upon how long it takes for students to accomplish the training objectives, the variance in duration is usually a matter of minutes or hours. At a minimum, trainees arrive on a certain date and know that they will depart on a specified date. Detainees do not know when their detention will end. Some detentions last only over a span of hours, while others can last for years. While long-term psychological harm can occur from relatively brief distressing experiences, the likelihood of psychological harm is generally increased by more lengthy and uncertain detentions.

8. ADJUSTMENT TO THE EXPERIENCE AND FOLLOW-ON SUPPORT. The simulated captivity experience we put people through in SERE training causes students to have to adjust as well. Unlike real world detention, SERE training is structured in a way to enhance and reinforce positive adjustments and coping styles that have helped past POWs and hostages to survive and return with honor….. Finally, the operational and psychological debriefing processes used in SERE training help students adjust by understanding and normalizing their responses to training dilemmas rather than pathologizing them. The reintegration processes we have in place for our personnel returned from captivity perform the same functions, helping returnees successfully manage their re-emergence into everyday life, and aiding future trainees to learn from their experiences. In addition we help them develop action plans for how to handle future situations the returnee may find challenging. Obviously, we cannot assume that enemy detainees have comparable reintegration programs to aid their adjustment, thus increasing the likelihood of them developing long-term problems.

Jeff:

Glassman: So, Mr. Nance, please explain how the waterboarding at SERE is intended to induce in the trainee less of a response than what waterboarding is intended to induce when practiced on an enemy? What specifically is done in training that gives evidence to your claim that it induces less of a response? Is something done in training that signals waterboarder intent to the trainee?

Nance: I will refer you to the testimony given by Dr. Jerald Ogrisseg, the former head of Psychological Services for the Air Force SERE School, before the Senate Committee on Armed Services (June 17 and September 25, 2008). I will quote at length from his testimony now, but ask that the entirety of his testimony be entered in the record.

“There are a number of important differences between SERE school and real world interrogations that would limit my conclusions to the SERE school training populations. I will review those differences that I am aware of below:

1. PREVIOUS LEVEL OF FUNCTIONING AND DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS. Military SERE training students are screened multiple times prior to participating in training to ensure that they are physically and psychologically healthy. They get screened prior to entering the service to ensure that they don't have certain disorders… Most SERE schools also mandate that students complete screening questionnaires after they arrive at SERE school as a final safety check and for additional help or interventions if needed, to include being restricted from experiencing particular training procedures….

2. PURPOSE OF THE EXPERIENCE. SERE resistance training instruction is provided to increase the survivability, enhance the resistance capabilities of the students, and increase their confidence in their abilities to resist and survive….. Real world interrogation and detention facilities exist to elicit information from the enemy that will be used to shape future and ongoing military operations and provide our troops with tactical, operational, and strategic advantages. As such, the detention environment is another form of the conflict between adversaries. Unlike in SERE training where the goal is not to defeat the student, the real world interrogator wants to win…..

3. RISK MANAGEMENT OVERSIGHT FUNCTIONS. Within the SERE training environment, there are multiple levels of oversight mechanisms in place to reinforce the purpose of the training and the training objectives, and to prevent harmful behavioral drift….. Unlike the training environment, remotivating detainees to succeed is not an oversight responsibility or concern. While it is U.S. policy to have physical and mental health services available to detainees, it is not ethical to have these services provided by practitioners serving other roles within the detention environment.

4. PROPENSITY FOR MORAL DISENGAGEMENT. Moral disengagement is a term that refers to the attitude changes that allow someone to violate their internal moral standards and act in more aggressive and reprehensible ways. As part of the risk management oversight role, SERE psychologists train the resistance training staff on attitudinal and behavioral signs of moral disengagement, monitor the instructors for signs of moral disengagement, and then intervene if necessary to bring instructors back in line within the spirit of training operational instructions. A significant barrier to moral disengagement is removed in the transition from SERE training to real world detention operations. While moral disengagement can still occur in a SERE resistance training setting (which is why the oversight mechanisms are in place), the instructors are still dealing with their own country personnel. When dealing with non-country personnel, as in the case of detainee handling, there is greater risk of dehumanization of these personnel, and thus a greater likelihood of worse treatment that exceeds the limits of operational instructions.

5. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND OPERATIONAL DEBRIEFINGS. As I described in my July 24, 2002 memo to Lieutenant Colonel Baumgartner, SERE training students receive several training debriefs that serve to reinforce training objectives and decrease the students' risk of developing psychological disorders by normalizing the students' training experiences and reactions. These debriefings are obviously not available to real world detainees like they are to our students.

6. ``VOLUNTARY'' NATURE OF TRAINING. SERE training, to an extent, is a voluntary experience. Students can withdraw from training. It is not entirely voluntary, in thatcompleting training is a job requirement for many military specialties. Failing to complete training can result in administrative consequences, disqualification from worldwide deployment, and possibly retraining into a different career specialty if students aren't ultimately able to complete training. Nonetheless, students may terminate the training experience if they desire to.Being a detainee, like being incarcerated in the criminal prison system, is not voluntary. Detainees cannot choose to withdraw from their detention.

7. LIMITED DURATION OF THE EXPERIENCE. Limited duration of the experience.The SERE training experience is of limited duration and has defined starting and ending points. While the actual duration of training events may vary depending upon how long it takes for students to accomplish the training objectives, the variance in duration is usually a matter of minutes or hours. At a minimum, trainees arrive on a certain date and know that they will depart on a specified date. Detainees do not know when their detention will end. Some detentions last only over a span of hours, while others can last for years. While long-term psychological harm can occur from relatively brief distressing experiences, the likelihood of psychological harm is generally increased by more lengthy and uncertain detentions.

8. ADJUSTMENT TO THE EXPERIENCE AND FOLLOW-ON SUPPORT. The simulated captivity experience we put people through in SERE training causes students to have to adjust as well. Unlike real world detention, SERE training is structured in a way to enhance and reinforce positive adjustments and coping styles that have helped past POWs and hostages to survive and return with honor….. Finally, the operational and psychological debriefing processes used in SERE training help students adjust by understanding and normalizing their responses to training dilemmas rather than pathologizing them. The reintegration processes we have in place for our personnel returned from captivity perform the same functions, helping returnees successfully manage their re-emergence into everyday life, and aiding future trainees to learn from their experiences. In addition we help them develop action plans for how to handle future situations the returnee may find challenging. Obviously, we cannot assume that enemy detainees have comparable reintegration programs to aid their adjustment, thus increasing the likelihood of them developing long-term problems.

See more "specifics" at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/treatment.html

Small and snippy, but in light of Prole's good quote, I'll keep it short:
"Your honor, in light of the fact that the Left has failed to establish a prima facie case that waterboarding is always torture, and indeed has contradicted that position with its own witness, we request the court direct a verdict that sometimes waterboarding is not torture."
Don't quit your day job, Mr. Glassman. As this is a legal question ("does the use of waterboarding constitute torture?"), it would be a matter of law, not of fact. This means that the judge would rule on the question, and the jury would apply the law to the question of fact ("did the US torture prisoners, and in doing so violate domestic and international law?"). Directing a verdict on a question of law would be baffling, to say the least.

You guys are funny!!

Nick #189 & Prole #188,

In the matter of the People’s Republic of Amerika vs. former President George W. Bush, illegally elected, and the former United States of America, the court finds as follows:

The court takes judicial notice of the People’s SERE publication. The court also takes notice sua sponte of the psychological makeup of the current crop of former enemies, single minded jihadists, suicidally committed to a holy cause, naïve in worldly and military matters, especially ordinary requirements for secrecy and safeguarding information, and hence highly susceptible to minimally intense interrogation techniques. The court also has taken notice of the four Geneva Accords, and various statutes and treaties regarding torture and the treatment of captives in war.

The charge brought by the People’s Attorney is that George W. Bush and the United States of America violated the law on torture, specifically the Torture Act of 2000, 28 USC §2340 et seq., by waterboarding certain detainees captured in various actions, a matter of fact. However, the court finds that as a matter of law the statute is unconstitutionally vague, that defendants cannot know what is prohibited in general, or whether waterboarding in particular is prohibited, and consequently the jury cannot be properly instructed in the matter.

Case dismissed with prejudice.

Jeff,

Well, I'm glad that's over. Ignorance of the law *is* an excuse, and now that we know the law is vague, we can torture away and say we didn't know it was wrong! That argument has worked really well in real courts in the past. Thank goodness, and thank you for appointing yourself as both counsel and judge. That's justice at its best!
Now can we move on to the fact that waterboarding is wholly counterproductive in the struggle of ideology in which we're engaged? That in fact, it's pretty much exactly what our enemies want us to do?

Jeff,

That law is about as far from being unconstitutionally vague as the Cubs are from their last world series victory (much farther even, than the Leafs from their last Stanley Cup victory).

Here's the offence:

(a) Offense.— Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction.— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
(c) Conspiracy.— A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

Here's the definition:

As used in this chapter—
(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.

It's been a long time since my last post. Just wanted to through this in. The "Fat Man" device was dropped on the Mitsubishi torpedo factory that produced weapons used in the Pearl Harbor attack. That is a legitimate military target.

"There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender."

You did read that prior to posting it, didn't you? Your own post just refuted your case with respect to substantially every case of which I'm aware, with the exception of Abdullah al-Muhajir (aka Jose Padilla).

Rhowk,

We are talking past one another. The simple fact of the matter is that bona fide leftists, and merely stupid people say the same thing. Leftists intend the subversion of our cultural and political system, and the merely stupid just help to facilitate it by repeating things they hear, which generally originate from the Leftists.

Now, there is also room here for what I would term a genuinely liberal approach. For people--for example soldiers--who are uncomfortable with the tactic of torture, I have no problem. For people who want to argue it is ineffective compared to other available tactics, I have no problem. For people who want to argue that it creates public relations issues (particularly since our own beloved Left works hard to keep our mistakes on the front pages), I have no problem.

Practically, I have no issue with the banning of torture in general. It is likely a good idea.

Here, though, is my problem: the tactics of the Left are always discrete from their stated ends. Phrased another way, of the many regimes in this world currently torturing people, 95% of the venom is reserved for the United States, which did very little of it, did it within a defensible legal rubric, used tactics calculated not to create permanent damage, and did it in a perceived condition of tremendous national peril.

And according to the people involved, it worked. We got usable intel which increased our national security.

Now, the argument can be made that we made an error. There are pros and cons to this argument, and for my part I see no need to win one side or the other argument. The argument that matters to me is the one which states that Bush was some sort of moral monster, along with his "beast" Cheney, and they both are criminals. This case simply does not hold water.

Congress was briefed on what they were doing. No one raised objections. This constituted tacit support.

The President, ultimately, is only beholden to our own laws. We don't make the laws internationally, and frankly many of them appear expressly calculated to damage our national interests. And the President did not break our laws. The people who were waterboarded were foreign nationals, and underwent that procedure on foreign soil. And all of them were committed to mass murder, and most of them likely guilty themselves of torturing others.

For those of you who are not fully gone, reread some of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Both Obama and Clinton were enormously influenced by him: http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/8925/alinsky.htm

Let me cut and paste a couple that appear relevant here: Rule 3: "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty."

How many of us actually know what information was gained, or how effective different techniques are?

Rule 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)"

This is the crux here of most Leftist attacks. They decontextualize things--for example by omitting entirely from their analysis our very valid fear more attacks were coming--then attack us with them.

What is omitted as well from their analysis is any rational standard by which they THEMSELVES can be judged. They believe nothing, so they cannot be hypocritical. This is why I argue power is the only good for postmoral Leftists.

Rule 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions."

Why do I get angry? Because I know damn well that mocking me is simply a tactic used by the intellectually bankrupt to disrupt the discussion entirely.

Rule 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance."

Why is there a flavor of the month atrocity that Neocrats accuse the Republicans of? Simple: they want a non-stop, 24 hour a day parade of negatives, that need not be true, credible, or even coherent. Image is everything. All Karl Rove did was use a small amount of the Neocrats own medicine against them.

Finally, RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions."

What is the goal? To inflict emotional damage on people that is substantial enough that they back off.

Let us recall Vietnam, again, for the simple reason that is the defining event for the Neocrats, and they got it completely wrong. Their stated criterion for action was the increase in human liberty, well being, and freedom from oppression. What happened when we abandoned the South, was quite literally a regime based on torture. They would put people 100 to a room that was overcrowded when the Thieu regime put 50 in there. They put sand in the very little food they allowed them.

And the Left had nothing to say about this. They were too busy snorting coke, and dancing to the Beegees.

If the standard REALLY were a genuine, sincere concern for the well being of all of humankind, we would see a much more sensitive, comprehensive engagement with this topic.

As it is, we have a propagandistic, cartoonish portrait of a former President of the United States, and his Vice President. This picture is not nuanced for the simple reason that propaganda has to be direct, hit to the gut, and simple to repeat.

At the end of the day, at the end of the analysis, our policy positions may be quite similar. But my sense is that the way we get there differ, radically.

Prole #193,

For those like John #9, Marky #19, and Rachel #23, this is what Rest Day is all about – teaching mental fitness to argue, and to direct that new, tough body.

Repeating text ad nauseum is no help to your case. Nor is it helpful to SHOUT, or call for repeated readings, or name call, as rhowk does. Nor punctuate. with. exaggeration. like. Nance.

I don’t think you’ve been following the argument. You need to make objective, explicit, and unambiguous the words “severe (¶1)”, “prolonged (¶2)”, “suffering (¶2(A))”, and “profoundly (¶2(D))”, and each in the context of “intended (¶1)” and “calculated (¶2(D))”, all from the definition of torture -- that I remind you doesn't even mention waterboarding. Try to make these as clear as living gets either a zero or a one, including coma, for the murder statutes.

Way to stay on argument Barry. Surprise, surprise another 2 page rant blaming lefties for everything from the Beegees to Vietnam. I think you forgot to include the fact that they are 100 foot tall robots with lasers for eyes and the leading cause of gingivitis. Seriously, if lefties were responsible for everything you say they are then they are some pretty badass mofos! Seriously#2, get yourself some help, you obviously have some issues to work out. Don't let yourself become the next Scott Roeder.

Glassman, you should seriously reread Prole's thrashing of you. Even I was hurting from that. As far as your credibility vs. Nance's on this subject, really there is no contest. Give. it. up.

Jeff,

I won my "case" over an hour ago.

Look up "reckless driving" in whatever statute applies in your jurisdiction, or "aggravated assault". Here are some other commonplace adjectival legal terms that are not vague: "willfully blind", "diligent", oh yes, and that most precise of terms "reasonable" "reasonable person" etc etc. Using adjectives in statutory provisions or in the articulations of the legal tests that give those provisions meaning does not make those provisions or those tests "vague".

It would take a treatise to go through each one of the terms in the US Code that could be candidates for vagueness (bad candidates). Another time perhaps.

Could you imagine Cheney or Bush on the stand testifying that they couldn't understand the torture provisions of the Code? If it ever came to that the justice system would be their secondary concern. The first concern would be that US citizens would turn on them like the grown up children of abusive, shameful alcoholic parents.

Erin
22:27
As rx'd

rhowk #197,

There you go again recommending reading repetition and pulling adjectives (railing, thrashing) out of midair. Apparently that’s how you discovered that the torture laws include waterboarding. Never mind that the word isn’t there, just claim that it is. Read them and reread them, over and over, and, lo, you come to believe what you want to believe. The words pop out in CAPS with new and obvious meanings for the lexicon of the left.

I’ll just go with the position you and Nance actually wrote to make the case for the left: waterboarding sometimes is not torture. Period.

QED.

Prole #198,

Here’s the real test for unconstitutionally vague:

>> [W]e insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited … Second, … laws must provide explicit standards for those who apply them. 408 US 104 (1972), Grayned v. City of Rockford.

W. had ordinary intelligence, wouldn’t you say? More, if Gore’s the standard. Or the TOTUS, for that matter.

If it were as you suggest that some other law is equally as vague, the government could prosecute on the basis that it wrote other laws just as bad as the Torture Act of 2000.

Even if other laws provided definitions for the problematic terms of severe, prolonged, profoundly, suffering, and calculated, they would not apply to different statute from other enactments. Each public law provides its own definitions, as the Torture Act does.

If the US had not waterboarded during the Bush administration, you radicals would be out to get him for using sleep deprivation or providing small print Korans or whatever. Your clan soon will to be out to get Sheriff Arpaio for feeding prisoners a nasty FDA approved law salt diet. Political correctness like affirmative action never ends.

Yes, Jeff, if we hadn't waterboarded, I would still take issue with how we've treated our prisoners of war.
The torture issue is much broader than just waterboarding and whether or not it's listed by name.
You, and anyone else, would find a number of SOP tactics to be extremely degrading if done to you, or your kids, or your wife, or your friends, etc. Everyone wants to focus on the waterboarding of the few detainees that we've admitted we waterboarded, forgetting about the repeated daily humiliating and degrading physical and psychological mistreatment of detainees, most of whom have never been charged with a crime much less convicted. How that makes us safer is beyond me. I find it ludicrous.

Prole,

You ignored my comment on jurisdiction. American laws do not apply to non-Americans overseas. This is both common sense and precedent.

Rhowk,

You are intentionally misunderstanding me. I will repeat, for a general audience, Rule 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

That is the point of the giant robot: he wants to make me look like a fool without actually going to the trouble of even a RUDIMENTARY effort to understand me.

Let me reiterate a few arguments he has ignored, because he can't, apparently, address them.

First, if the Left actually had a genuine concern with the widespread use of torture, we would have had a massive outcry after the end of the Vietnam War when the North implemented in the South the same systematic processes of mass indoctrination through coercive violence, which included mass murder, the creation of enormous gulags, and, yes, torture. Frequent torture, used to generate ideological compliance with farcically stupid agendas.

We won the war. If it was ever a genuine civil war against the Thieu regime, it was not after Tet, when Communist thugs murdered over 3,000 civilians in, I believe, Hue. It was even less a civil war in 1972, after we had eliminated the VC as a viable force, and the North simply showed its true cards and invaded over the border with tanks and fighters.

Nixon committed to Thieu, as a condition for a peace agreement which included leaving in place existing NVA forces (which of course the North denied were there; a denial which people like John Kerry accepted at face value), that we would provide air power to back him in future battles, and continue to provide aid.

Congress reneged on these deals, after widespread misunderstandings of the conflict had penetrated the American public consciousness through very systematic, widespread disinformation campaigns sponsored by the Left in our own country, and enthusiastically sponsored--to the extent consistent with deniability--by both the North Vietnamese and the Soviets.

These facts are undeniable. I see no room whatsoever for evasion or compromise. There was a possibility, back in the 70's, when the North Vietnamese were still lying, to deny that the war, from beginning to end, was primarily a Communist invasion of a sovereign nation.

That is no longer possible. We have talked with Giap and other NVA generals. We have studied their records. They have told us, for example, that Jane Fonda was greatly encouraging to them--she provided morale for their troops--at a time when their own confidence was waning in the face of repeated battlefield defeats.

Rhowk,

You can mock me. You can mock my understanding of history. You can pretend that putting people in 2'x2' cages, and leaving them there in the jungle heat for years on end is acceptable. You can pretend that stringing them up by their arms until their shoulders are ripped out of socket, and doing it as a matter of state policy day in and day out is acceptable.

You can, in short, shirk all shreds of even outward human decency and compassion.

But don't claim the moral high ground in so doing.

All of these discussions happen in contexts. If you want to limit them only to contexts which support your demonization of America and the wonderful sense of justice and liberty we possess, then you will find no support from me.

rhowk,

Nice one with Scott Roeder. I didn't know who that was. For a more general audience, let us return to Alinsky: "RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)"

Now, comparing me to a zealot from the Religious Right is ridiculous. I have never, not once, exhibited any of those traits. Not in this debate, not in others. I am not a Christian, and don't go to church. I am personally pro-Choice, but reject entirely the logic of Roe v. Wade as manifestly unconstitutional bench legislation.

So what is he trying to do? Reach for the bottom of the barrel. Keep the pressure up. Use any and all possible insult to make me look bad, associate me with the "enemy" (Alinsky's word), and cause people to ignore or reject what I have to say.

This sort of tactic is less than fully human, in my view. Certainly it is less than liberal. It IS consistent with Communistic efforts to demonize the Other, which in the history of nations where such people held political control, led to massacres, widespread torture (not mentioned or objected to by leftists in still-free nations), and of course massive, habeas corpus-free imprisonment, often for life.

You want to object to my characterization of you, but the fact is I am explaining carefully why I think what I do, and all you are doing is supporting me by bringing up massive non sequiturs like that.

My points on Leftism are fully relevant. Waterboarding is just the flavor of the month outrage, part of campaign to "keep the pressure on". You all don't care about torture, per se. You didn't care about it when Saddam Hussein did it. You don't care about it in Cuba or Iran.

Roeder is presumably the next flavor, so you are merely shifting gears. You run through your stock of outrage, then put in a new stock. It's a simple process, even if also one carried out for fools by fools.

Now, let us be systematic.

(I will add, that I am very glad that I retain the capacity for reason, and do not have need for creative insult, injurious insult, or images of giant robots; it would be truly frustrating to be that intellectually venal).

As I see it, there are four issues in play: morality, legality, efficacy in getting information that is useful, and efficacy within a larger context of a global war for, in effect, opinion.

One could say that torture never works. In this case, there is no reason to ever use it. I will agree with this.

One could claim that torture sometimes works, but NEVER as well as other available methods. Functionally this is the same as the first. It should never be used.

One could claim that torture sometimes works BETTER than other methods, in which case we enter the moral realm. We will bracket that for a moment.

One could claim that torture ALWAYS works better than other methods. This appears to me counterfactual. This is not accurate, empirically, to the best of my knowledge.

Now, if we hew to the argument that torture is sometimes the best method--for example, under time pressure, since many other tactics take a lot of time--then we have to ask under what conditions it is used, if at all.

Morally, one could claim that torture is ALWAYS wrong, no matter what, and should never be used.

This brings up my limit case. Ethics is the process of using reason to organize our behavior according to principles. For torture to ALWAYS be wrong, the organizing principle would have to be: torture is always wrong. It would then, be necessary for people making this claim to ALWAYS object to its use, anywhere. If someone simultaneously makes this claim, but ignores it everywhere but the US, we are dealing with disingenuous propaganda, pure and simple.

If the organizing principle, on the other hand, is "act so as to increase the total amount of human happiness in the world"; or even: "act such that you would will your action to be a universal principle"; then there are points where torture is the LESSER evil than doing nothing. Note that this is not to say it is not evil, but that it is LESS evil than doing nothing.

In wars we kill civilians. This is simple fact. So do our enemies. We try to prevent civilian casualties; often our enemies--like Al Queda, and the Vietcong--are trying to inflict them. In any conflict, however, there are concrete results to both the victors and the losers. For the losers, they are condemned, often--as in the case of South Vietnam--to death, privation, misery, and slavery.

Thus, people will die either way. No matter what happens, misery happens. The question, then, becomes, what is the best course, over the long haul, for everyone concerned? To fail to ask this question is to avoid the simple realities of history.

And this is what people intend, who would let the world die before countenancing the use of torture. This is an extreme example, but the logic behind it is irrefutable. It is sound. Rhowk does not want to engage with it for the simple reason that his position is based on the idea that things that are unpleasant in this world can be ignored. We can act AS IF we don't often face decisions between two $hitty alternatives.

However, this is the way the world works. Often, no matter what you do, people die. How do we stop them from dying, in a sustainable way, is the question RESPONSIBLE people ask themselves.

Thus, unless one is directly and openly willing to open oneself up to subjugation by others, one must put the use of torture on a moral continuum.

Clearly, we do not want to authorize its use on anyone and everyone, at any time, for any reason. This would be stupid, and as stated, torture is clearly not the best tactic in the overwhelming bulk of situations.

However, the ETHICAL thing to do is to decide, in advance, what the conditions would be in which the use of torture was LESS objectionable than allowing some act of violence to proceed when we had the power to prevent it.

In large organizations, ethics gets implemented through policy, and policy is affected by law. The question, then, becomes what is legal where?

Clearly, it is illegal to torture American citizens on American soil. Beyond that, however, what is the case?

Bush asked this logical, and pragmatic question of John Cho, and got an answer. Bush went through something like the process I just described, and reached a policy position which was consistent with, in my view, efficacy, law, and morality.

He did not demand we use torture. Within his policy, it need not have been used at all. However, he created the FREEDOM for those tasked with defending us to do what they thought they needed to do, WITHIN LIMITS, to defend us.

With respect to our standing overseas, it goes without saying that waterboarding is something the Left loves to talk about. Since their goal is the overthrow of our democratic system of government, they obviously want to use every opportunity to make us look bad they can find.

However, it was not just the Left. As a free Republic, this debate is also one we should have. As tempted as I am to say that we can eliminate the risk of public relations damage by doing what we do in secret, I think we do, on some level, need to ask ourselves who we want to be.

Personally, I am comfortable with the decisions Bush made, although I wish I had more information on what the options are, and what their relative efficacy is. If most of our alternatives are nearly as good, then we need to ratchet up tremendously the criteria for torture (obviously, with Obama in charge this is a moot point). And, as stated, if other methods are always better, then this issue is decided.

But the simple fact is that, according to senior officials in both the Bush and Obama administration, we did get actionable intel, that made us safer, through coercive tactics used on very ugly, nasty people.

For that reason, +1 to Bush for making a tough decision that appears to have born fruit. +1 to Truman for dropping the bomb, and -1 for sacking Macarthur. I haven't studied the Korean War as well as need to, but I suspect a nuke used there would have freed us from a 55 year and counting occupation of the South, as well as the current threat of nuclear attack by a regime that makes much of its money, apparently, from organized crime and drug sales.

I will add, that torture is morally unobjectionable in most of the Middle East, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and many other nations.

The simple fact of the matter is that many Al Queda operatives torture not just for information, but for fun. If, then, they are claiming that our use of torture "radicalized" them, then they are simply offering up propaganda.

Now, the Abu Ghraib pictures--while far from torture--did go far to convince an already very wary Iraq that we DID mean them harm. That was simple stupidity. We can agree on that.

The sort of thing we are talking about here, though, Islamic extremists--and Arabs generally-- understand fully, and if they want to object on moral ground, they are being, certainly, hypocritical, and likely simply dishonest.

"RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

Note, you yourself, as a radical, need not live up to those rules. This is why the enemy--the non-radicalized people of the United States--is demonized, and everyone else ignored.

Jeff,

1. Legal Interpretation
Your following statement is false: "Even if other laws provided definitions for the problematic terms of severe, prolonged, profoundly, suffering, and calculated, they would not apply to different statute from other enactments. Each public law provides its own definitions, as the Torture Act does."

And you’ve cited the following court holding in support of a proposition that it does not support: [W]e insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited … Second, … laws must provide explicit standards for those who apply them. 408 US 104 (1972), Grayned v. City of Rockford'. That holding does not mean that a person of ordinary intelligence must be able to know what it is prohibited by a law the first time he or she glances at it. There is an onus on all people of ordinary intelligence to try to understand what is prohibited. That is why every time a person needs to consult with a lawyer before he or she understands a law, that law is not unconstitutionally vague. It is also why two or five lawyers can come up with different plausible, reasonable interpretations of the same prohibition without that law being unconstitutionally vague.

Consider, for instance, this prohibition punishable by fine or imprisonment (16 USCS § 1538):

a) Generally.
(1) Except as provided in sections 6(g)(2) and 10 of this Act [16 USCS §§ 1535(g)(2), 1539], with respect to any endangered species of fish or wildlife listed pursuant to section 4 of this Act [16 USCS § 1533] it is unlawful for any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to--
….
(B) take any such species within the United States or the territorial sea of the United States;

Corresponding definition of “take” set out in 16 USCS § 1532:

(19) The term "take" means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.

Now, is it any easier for a person of “ordinary intelligence” to know what sort of conduct is not permitted by the prohibition against “taking”, i.e., harassing or harming or attempting to harass or harm an endangered species within the US or the territorial sea of the US, than it is to determine whether a type of conduct results in “severe physical or mental pain or suffering” under 18 US § 2340? What does it mean to harass a polar bear, or an owl, or a salamander? Arguably it would be far easier for a human being to know what cause severe physical or mental pain or suffering to another human being than it would for a human being to know what level of disturbance of a mollusk can tolerate it is harassed.

Harassing or harming fish or wildlife could involve many different types of activities and effects, but these things are connected by some overarching concept. Not every act or effect that constitutes the harassment of listed fish or wildlife could be enumerated in a statute, just as not every act or effect that constitutes “severe physical or mental pain or suffering” could be enumerated in a statute. And this is why it would have been ridiculous for the Congress to include waterboarding as a tag-on example of torture in 18 US § 2340. It would have modified the way the overarching concepts of “severe pain and suffering” would be interpreted, and inappropriately narrowed the scope of activities falling within the prohibition. Of course you know that George and Dick (or there advisors) understood this is how the law works and that is why they sought legal advice before they authorized torture by waterboarding. This may be overkill, but just so you don’t bring it up, it is no defence to a charge that you received bad legal advice.

2. Charge of being a “radical”
You call me a radical? Which kind? The kind whose opinions are informed by the values of D'Alembert's "Preliminary Discourse" to the "Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers "? the values embodied in the U.S. Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? the values of public-spirited citizenship described in Machiavelli's “Discourses on Livy”? and the values of cosmopolitanism displayed described by Voltaire, Montesquieu and Kant? Am I the kind of "radical" who values law and order established through laws enacted by elected legislatures and administered by officials constrained by the rule of law and the Constitution, the kind of radical who sees the value of the profit motive and cooperation and compassion and religious tolerance and secular civil society, and diplomacy?

You honestly think the things I've written (and chosen to quote) on this forum indicate my "political correctness"?

I think, they indicate something most people on both the right and left call "reasonableness". I won't quote you a definition on that point, but it might be salutary for you to look one up (in a book).

There are many folks who think that interpreting laws to permit torture and to permit the accumulation of power in the executive is "radical" in a 1930's sort of way.

Jeff, are you a radical? Are you an enemy of the US Constitution and of the people it protects? Shall I bang my gavel until you establish you are not a radical?

Barry,

I'm at work, so please forgive my brevity. Your comment on jurisdiction was:
"There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender."

You did read that prior to posting it, didn't you? Your own post just refuted your case with respect to substantially every case of which I'm aware, with the exception of Abdullah al-Muhajir (aka Jose Padilla)."
What is this refuting? I'm not sure of the point you're making here. Are you saying that the law doesn't apply outside the US?
You also wrote:
"American laws do not apply to non-Americans overseas. This is both common sense and precedent."
Well, the statute at hand - 18 USC 113C § 2340A (forgive my earlier citation fail) explicitly talks about being outside the US. See also the recent opinion of the (very conservative) Fourth Circuit's in United States of America v Mohammad-Omar, affirming the conviction of a defendant for conduct which occurred entirely outside the United States. The Court found that there was a sufficient nexus between the defendant's conduct and the United States, such that application would not be "arbitrary or fundamentally unfair." The defendant had been selling drugs knowing they were going to the US. This "nexus" requirement seems a reasonable enough standard, and would apply to the collection of intelligence by US persons for US use.
So, bummer, US laws can and do apply outside our territory. See also 18 USC 212 on military extraterritorial jurisdiction.

Link to Fourth Circuit's opinion:
http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/084596.U.pdf

Nick,

If loitering is illegal in the US, would it then be legal for us to arrest people in Cambodia for it? You just took the defined jurisdiction in the statute, and made it global.

You also did a very nice job of ignoring what is likely the most concise, clear summary of the issue you will find anywhere. I'm proud of that. If someone laid the issues out better than that, please link it. In my experience, serious engagement with the process of intellectual coherence is a lost discipline in our postrational world.

It would seem clear that Prole, in ignoring my response, is admitting that I am right.

Now, it is the case that the Supreme Court is trying to insert their influence into policy issues confronting our military in wars fought in foreign nations. This is PATENTLY, UNMISTAKEABLY contrary to very carefully delineated balance of powers enshrined in our Constitution.

If someone wants to say our Constitution is shredded, the most credible examples are Brown v. the Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. Nothing Bush did or is alleged to have done even comes CLOSE.

You know what, I misread that. That's why Prole is ignoring me. I stepped on my own anatomy there. You actually misread it, too, Nick.

Here is the salient point: the very people trying, now, to bring Bush to trial, were briefed on what was going on and raised no objections. This is a matter of public record.

According to that statute, then, anyone who was aware of what was being planned or done, would legally be an accessory to that act, and thus guilty of conspiracy.

Do we want to put Nancy Pelosi on trial next to Bush?

This whole thing will blow over soon, I'm quite certain. The political mileage to be gained has disappeared. It is in no one's interest, at this stage, to open this can of worms.

how is Brown v. the Board of Education an example of the Constitution being shredded?

Dammit, this is why I need to Google more: insert John Yoo for John Cho. I thought I had pulled it out of my memory correctly, but I didn't.

What of it, Prole: should we prosecute as accessories to a crime all members of Congress who had advance knowledge of CIA plans and did nothing?

Barry,

There are many issues here and I haven't been concerned about jurisdiction today, but rather waterboarding as torture.

#212: the issue of segregation was not a legal issue. It was a political issue that should have been resolved legislatively by Congress.

Do you not realize that the COURTS ran the busing programs? Through that decision, they quite literally inserted themselves directly into policy making on a national level. They are unelected, and unaccountable to the People except very tangentially.

Running a busing program is not the duty--much less the right--of the Courts; it is the duty of the Legislative branch to make policy, and of the Executive to enforce it.

A careful reading of our Constitution will not even find you the right of the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of legislation. That is merely precedent, although I am willing to accept that, on balance, that ability has worked for the better.

Our Founding Fathers were geniuses, though, and the problem we now face is that no one can rule on the Constitutionality of the Supreme Courts own decisions. In our system, if they rule something valid, even an Act of Congress may not be enough to overturn it.

This sets up the potential--used frequently in the last half century--for blatant power mongering, and Constitutional abuses which directly undermine the rule of the People, BY the people.

Prole,

I will agree that the Act does say that the jurisdiction covers what American citizens DO, anywhere.

Let us then add a further level of analysis.

One could argue that torture provides information BETTER than other options, place conditions on its use, but also place its legality on a continuum from clearly legal, to clearly banned.

What Bush sought from John Yoo, ultimately, was a legal pretext by which he could do what he felt was necessary in a situation where we all felt in grave danger.

That he sought such a pretext--rather than simply order secret things to be done he hoped no one would discover--belies the notion that he was somehow "fascist", as he was so often accused.

The Chinese are fascist. Al Queda operatives are fascists. The Cubans are fascists.

Bush utilized our system of law in such a way that what he did may be ruled, at some point, technically illegal, but close enough to allowable that he can be given a good faith exemption, along with the same House and Senate Democrats who now want to bring charges.

You should prosecute anyone who has committed a crime. I’m not on a team Barry. A criminal is a criminal.

If your nation does not have the stomach to put those among its elected representatives who have committed crimes in jail (or if that isn’t legally possible), then perhaps you should create a “truth commission”, what we in Canada call a “public inquiry”, with summons powers, funded publicly and staffed by impartial private sector counsel and investigators to lay the sordid mess bare. Things that should be kept confidential for national security reasons could be kept confidential, but access to information laws should be applied liberally so that as much information as could possibly come out would come out.

Jane Fonda and Dennis Miller could be alternating chairs.

Barry,

So you don't think that the 14th Amendment applies?

I'm not talking about busing, I'm specifically asking why requiring the integration of schools shreds the constitution.

Barry, you said that "American laws do not apply to non-Americans overseas. This is both common sense and precedent." I showed you that your statement was wrong, according to both courts (US v. Muhammad-Omar, among others) and Congress (18 USC 212, among others). Did you read the court opinion? There is a limit on extraterritorial jurisdiction, but it can be overcome "if there is an affirmative intention of the Congress clearly expressed."
The "defined jurisdiction in the statute" and affirmative intent are clearly expressed - s 2340A(b) states that:

There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.

Where is this not fitting together for you?

And I misread your statement. Dammit.

Nick,

You missed the same point I did: the law says it applies to American citizens. You are taking an unnecessary extra step.

Guy,

In a post-Marbury v. Madison world, they would be able to rule the laws of individual States unconstitutional, but not prescribe remedies. They prescribed remedies, which is the intended function of the legislative branch, for the reason that they are directly accountable to the people.

Prole,

What you don't seem to realize is that none of the Democrats raising a ruckus actually care about torture, per se. They have been perfectly willing to rationalize it in other nations for decades now. The point is that they THOUGHT they had a point of attack on Bush. Remember: you have to personalize things; this is Alinsky 101. Thus, Karl Rove, never the Republican Party.

I would be shocked if any such truth committee were to be formed. Too many people to be embarrassed.

The net as far as I'm concerned is Bush had reason to believe what he did was legal; it was done to evil men; and it yielded results that likely saved lives, just as closing Gitmo now will certainly cost lives.

And don't talk about how law-loving you are up in Canada, when you have in effect banned criticism of Muslims.

I was just telling my oldest last night, that everything Democrats say sounds good. They talk about justice, freedom, fairness, tolerance, decency. All of these things sound good. But the Neocratic Party of the post-60's DOES NOT HAVE PRINCIPLES.

Now, neither, apparently, do the post-Goldwater Republicans, but in general they cause much less loss of liberty and property, since they are not trying to save the world, so much as protect the one we have.

The only remedy I can seem to find in the decision (granted I skimmed through it) is that the court ruled that segregated schools violated the Constitution and therefore had to be integrated.

I don't see why that isn't just the application of the law as it exists.

You know, as I think about it: I don't want to have us live outside the law. That defeats the whole virtue of our system, which is honorable.

Within my own terminology, Liberalism is a doctrine within which power is distributed as widely as possible, consistent with sustainability, and checked everywhere by consistent adherence to law.

You can't legislate morality, which to my mind is an internal condition. You can, however, legislate behavior.

Discussions of this sort are reasonable and necessary. Bush may have misbehaved, but my honest view is that he stayed within the defensible, if not within what will ultimately be ruled the legal.

The problem lies in that to this pattern of sound, shall we say--this set of wave forms in creative interaction that constitute the lifeblood of a morally and intellectually engaged polity-- must be superadded this distorting signal of the intellectually deranged, and emotionally detached. When you turn up the feedback on your sound system, detecting a meaningful signal becomes next to impossible.

So for me, personally, when we conduct these discussions, I am just waiting for the zombie wanna-bes--the grateful dead, inured to the painful and unpleasant realities of a complex, morally challenging world--to come in working their hardest simply to add chaff to the discussion in such a way as to make it impossible to conduct it in the truly liberal, rational way our system of self government both allows and requires.

I probably do sometimes assume too much, too soon. But depressingly often, the reactions I get prove I'm right. But not always. And I must submit to myself the possibility that I never know when I'm being an idiot.

Conducted with sincerity, though, debates--agonistic, back and forth, heatedly argued debates--are useful. They force people to think, and they build the emotional and mental toughness necessary to engage with other points of view.

I don't like Rush Limbaugh, as I was accused of several times. I don't know what he has to say. If he's saying the same thing I am, it's because we are both using principle based analysis on the situation, and reaching similar conclusions.

There is room for Truman-esque Democrats in my world view. Even Bill Clinton-esque Democrats. But not radicals. Not people who think the ends justify the means, then cannot come up with principled ends. This leads to the logical conclusion that if power is the means, and there is no End that can be defined clearly, so that we know when we are there, then Power is the end.

Certainly, this was Alinsky's contention.

I will repeat, though, that I do believe the rule of law--applied evenly to all people and all situations--should be our defining characteristic.

"inured" should read "insensitive". The intent was to connote moral numbness cloaked rhetorically.

Barry,

I would on the whole agree with this:

"What you don't seem to realize is that none of the Democrats raising a ruckus actually care about torture, per se...The point is that they THOUGHT they had a point of attack on Bush."

But that's politics in a democracy. Sometimes the laws get enforced only because it is to the advantage of one or another political party. My point of view is that when laws on fundamental things like corruption, torture, rights violations, due process etc get enforced, it is advantageous to everyone except those who have violated them.

I hope your oldest gets the chance to understand the meanings of 'democratic' 'aristocratic' and 'monarchic'(and their corrupted forms) before moving on to "Neocratic". There is something to be said for the classical curriculum.

FYI: http://neocraticparty.org/

With respect to the Democrats, I am not saying no hearings should be held because Bush is a Republican. I am saying that if the concern is genuinely with illegality, they should have said something when they were briefed.

If it is to do with morality, they should be consistent and oppose torture everywhere.

If you want to be the Good Guys, which I think we have been, and should continue to be, you have to ask yourself where you can do good. For example, when North Vietnamese soldiers were sneaking into South Vietnamese villages, killing men, raping women, destroying crops, and forcing them to feed them, we did a good thing coming over to stop this. We were the Good Guys.

Now, I am OK with someone saying we were the Good Guys there, but bad in our use of torture. This is the sort of discussion, again, that should happen in a healthy system of self rule.

But what you can't do is bifurcate your politics so that you only condemn certain things when done by one group, but not another. Or condemn things in isolation, devoid of context.

Anyone who was claiming the North was innocent of subverting the South in the Vietnam War was wrong. Their decision to abandon the South led to massive death and destruction, the effects of which continue to this day. If they were sincere, if they truly wanted to be the Good Guys, they would admit it. This hasn't happened.

With respect to your web link, those guys are clearly Leftists of a Communist variety, which supports my claim that that is a useful--or at least descriptive--word.

One must, in evaluating the rhetoric of Communism, understand its history. Invariably, the rhetoric revolved around peace, justice, rule of the people (true Democracy, as in "Students for a Democratic Society, who were in effect a Communist front group), alleviation of suffering, equalization of wealth, etc.

What you see in the history, is the precise opposite. Bad regimes are replaced with truly horrific regimes. Prison camps that were bad under the old regime get twice as many people, twice the work, and half the food in the new regime.

Workers get turned from virtual slaves into actual slaves. In China, for example, there are to my understanding actual work camps to this very day, which use the labor of people coerced through State authority to work in effect for free. In Soviet Russia, after Lenin took over, being late to work 3 times could get you sent to the Gulag--or what cuickly became the Gulag. Not working as hard as they thought you should got your ration card reduced or eliminated. Since the State owned all the food, and since private trade was illegal, you were forced to break the law, or die of hunger if you fell afoul of the authorities.

One can only imagine what this system enabled with respect the abuse of women, which was well documented in many regimes.

Thus, when someone says: I believe we should act justly, this is valid principle, on the surface, but one must look, concretely, at the system of government they propose instead.

If, for example, someone proposes to mitigate the "rule" of the corporations by imposing State authority on them, the history of this is that the fate of the workers goes from bad to worse. They get less to eat. They have to work harder, and they have no redress. Any viable solutions, outside the purview of the State, are made illegal, since the State--unlike corporations--MAKES the laws. Corporations can skirt laws, and sometimes do. States, by definition, ARE the law.

Nothing is free in this world, and if something sounds too good to be true, it is.

I have posted this before, but this may be a good time to post it again, "Lament for Vietnam", by Doan van Toai: http://phanchautrinhdanang.com/30thang4/A%20Lament%20for%20Vietnam.htm

Much of it is quotable, and I would encourage anyone who sincerely wants to understand the REALITY of our moral history--particularly the decision to abandon South Vietnam--to read this in full.

One quote: "Vietnam today [post Communist takeover] is a country without any law other than the arbitrary directives of those in power. There is no civil code. Individuals are imprisoned without charges and without trial. Once in jail, prisoners are taught that their behavior, attitude and "good will" are the key factors in determining when they may be released -whatever crimes they may have committed."

What all of us need to understand, is that more or less the same people who tacitly gave Bush a green light to torture, and who tried to torpedo the war in Iraq, also were complicit in generating the political consensus that led to the War Powers Act, and the subsequent use of that act to prevent Ford from keeping Nixon's promises, and Nixon had been forced to resign.

Ted Kennedy, certainly, was very active then, and played a role throughout the Bush years.

At the risk of saying this too many times: if a principle is involved, it is universal. If the concern is pragmatic and specific, then it is not universal. You cannot condemn, then, something concrete, using a general principle, without also applying that principle EVERYWHERE.

What, then, to make of people who are concerned about what we Americans do, but entirely indifferent to why we do it, or to the very real, and much worse crimes of our enemies?

I have called them traitors in the past. Confused would be the perhaps the kindest word. In this particular case, through something close to sheer chance, they may be right, but it is not as an integrated element in a carefully thought through and coherent moral stance.

That will do today. I'll check back tomorrow, and answer any criticisms that may come up.

Barry Cooper, Re: Comment #205

Your logic, as far as I can discern, is nigh on impeccable, right up to this point:

"...I wish I had more information on what the options are, and what their relative efficacy is. If most of our alternatives are nearly as good, then we need to ratchet up tremendously the criteria for torture (obviously, with Obama in charge this is a moot point). And, as stated, if other methods are always better, then this issue is decided.

But the simple fact is that, according to senior officials in both the Bush and Obama administration, we did get actionable intel, that made us safer, through coercive tactics used on very ugly, nasty people.

For that reason, +1 to Bush for making a tough decision that appears to have born fruit. +1 to Truman for dropping the bomb, and -1 for sacking Macarthur. I haven't studied the Korean War as well as need to, but I suspect a nuke used there would have freed us from a 55 year and counting occupation of the South, as well as the current threat of nuclear attack by a regime that makes much of its money, apparently, from organized crime and drug sales."

The reason I say this? Your logic seems to get incomplete. To explicate:

Premise 1: Torture is acceptable under certain conditions.

>> That's a sound proposition.

Premise 2: Other methods should be selected over and above torture if they are comparably effective.

>> Sound as well.

Premise 3: We need to (and have to tried already) define the minimum conditions where torture is acceptable.

>> Fine.

Premise 4: Torture has been demonstrable effective at times.

>> See especially your paragraph beginning "The simple fact is.."

Conclusion: Our current standards of torture are acceptable.

>> Huh?

Do you see what I'm getting at?

You admit comparisons between torture and other methods need to be made, and then say that you wish you knew more about the comparative efficacy and range of other methods. You're simply trusting that someone, somewhere, has already done that for you. You justify the use of torture because it has been effective ("But the simple fact is...") without adequate knowledge of the alternatives. It may be that current US torture standards are as best as can be achieved, but the evidence is missing. So it stands as a hypothesis, and nothing more.

In fact, I seem to recall that non-torture interrogation methods have also yielded impressive results. I can't remember the details, but Saddam Hussein was caught using information gained through non-torture methods (and, pertinently, I think it was a time-limited scenario). Al-Qaeda was confirmed as responsible for 9/11 through the interrogation of a high-ranking member; but they did not torture him. They gave him cookies, and then they simply tricked him. Nothing physical whatsoever.

So now, it seems I could replace your paragraph with my own:

"But the simple fact is, we did get important, actionable intel through the use of non-torture tactics"

and thus proceed to a new conclusion.

(As an aside, to your RULE 4: I have seen you insist before that people not trust others to a have looked at the information for their decision making, but that they make those decisions themselves -- I'm thinking AGW debates. Might this be a case in point for you?)

Actually, there's a deeper issue here.

Now, let us assume the following are true: that torture may be necessary in some circumstances; that other methods are favourable over torture, ceteris parabus; and that we need to come to a decision as to what point torture becomes acceptable through necessity, with the aid of empirical knowledge.

The dilemma arises because we need to simultaneously satisfy these conditions, as I see it:

(1) Allowing enough freedom to torture, to prevent Event X.

(2) Not allowing enough freedom to torture to overstep the moral bounds we have agreed exist when it comes to torture.

There will be those who say we ought to be conservative and allow torture, just in case, because we can't risk Event X.

We need the empirical data on whether and when torture and non-torture work, and that data needs to be collected in real situations if we want it to be useful, it would seem.

But, if we allow torture, we will have what we may have now: it works, so we ought to keep it, and in any case, we can't risk Event X; and so we will not be sure as to whether our limits are the ones we really want them to be; whether we're really in the right position.

And it is only if we restrict torture more and more that we find out the probability of Event X actually occurring, and the true overall efficacy of other methods, and the right ethical position; but this is at the risk of letting Event X occur because other methods simply weren't effective enough.

We need to make a moral judgement here. There is no a priori way of deciding between the two options: putting the lives of our ourselves and others at potentially increased risk, or allowing ourselves an immoral standpoint because of fear.

Similarly, the whole process is circular. We need to know the empirical data about interrogation techniques before we can know what that critical point is; but we need to know what that critical point is before enacting certain interrogation techniques.

Personally, I would say, "Take the risk." It might not exist, and it allows us ascertain our position through the collection of proper data (which I do not see has been done yet). Until data has been gathered and various interrogation methods tried and tested, Event X is a hypothetical entity - a scary one, but hypothetical nonetheless. And if we hold back in fear of it, it becomes an unfalsifiable one, too.

Barry,

Do you have a source for this comment you made?

"The simple fact of the matter is that many Al Queda operatives torture not just for information, but for fun."

Dang me. This stuff is like crack for me.

Darije,

Well argued, as usual. The error in your assessment is, I think, that I am speaking of the past. To the extent of my knowledge, we have not tortured anyone in years. Most all of it was done shortly after 9/11, in my understanding. And in point of fact Obama has banned it.

So from my perspective, the relevant discussion is related to how we are to understand the Presidency of George Bush, with respect to this issue.

Since this could come up again, though, I will comment a bit more generally. You do rightly point to some tricky issues in the middle: how do we, for example, establish what is a proper reason to use torture, and how would we ever know that we could not have done better, with another tactic? Well, one obvious point is to invariably start with other techniques. There is no point at all in starting with the most morally objectionable tool in our arsenal, one of uncertain value in the best of circumstances. If we can get what we need using other methods, the point is moot.

Even more generally, I have argued in the past and will argue again that in my view a large part of the reason the CIA--which contrary to the views of many appears to me to have evolved in a State Department-like "progressive" direction--used so much torture, is they panicked. They knew too little of what they knew could be known, and they were desperate to make that gap up quickly.

Part of an intelligent prophylactic policy is substantial increases in our Human Intelligence capability. We need on-going, strong relationships with all groups in the world who could potentially be hostile. We need informers who are paid, or paid off somehow, and ideally we need to support people who support us.

In short, we need a much more full spectrum intelligence capability, which will in large measure, hopefully, mitigate the need for coercive interrogations.

Lyle,

One good resource of the sorts of people we are fighting is Michael Yon. I forget where I read it, but many of them, in Iraq, were fond of prostitutes, hard drugs, and torture.

This might give you some idea: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/bless-the-beasts-and-children.htm

What is the point of cutting the heads off of children, if you then kill the parents too? Who is left to absorb the lesson? The Americans? Other Iraqis?

Simple sadism seems the simplest explanation. It recurs often as you study the psychology of these people.

Barry,

I think you are too often equating everyone who has liberal points of view with liberal elected politicians.
If I'm opposed to torture in the US or by US personnel, it doesn't mean I don't care about it everywhere else as well. I most certainly do, and my wife works in the field of human rights. We're currently in the paperwork process of getting placement for human rights field work; actually doing boots on the ground work instead of just discussing it. I am quite liberal in my political views, but I have no designs on the destruction of democracy or the spread of socialism.
And you know that the legality of our torture policy is suspect at best, you said yourself that it may be shown to be "technically illegal."
In a perfect world, would I love to see the people responsible held accountable? Of course I would, but I know that won't happen, there are too many political careers at stake. I really don't care in the end. I want us to stop torturing people, period, because it's the right thing to do. No liberal conspiracy here, torturing people is not right and we need to stop it, right now, because we're better than that.
Why does it have to be all or nothing with you?

Barry,

Well done today, though wasted on our vitriolic radical friends. I especially liked #195, even though Saul Alinsky like Bill Ayres is a crashing bore.

Re Truman and MacArthur, I found them both to be correct. MacArthur was correct to urge taking the Korean War as far as necessary into China, and Truman was correct for firing him for insubordination. It was MacArthur’s noble sacrifice, tinged with his abundant arrogance.

As to Truman dropping the bombs, the choice was not tough at all. The ends were huge, and the means just a matter of efficiency in a war, not of our making, and from the beginning comprising strategic bombing against civilian populations. It was like pushing a car downhill. The ends didn’t need to justify those means. It was the great secret weapon of a pubescent boy's dreams. It was a simple calculus. Technology still is on our side.

Darije #228, Barry #230,

As to torture producing actionable intel as worries Darije at great length, I find this argument unavailing. We don’t torture. And we don’t because it is immoral. We do waterboard, because it is just over the line on the moral side, being brief and producing no lasting injury. The line has to be drawn somewhere in the spectrum of gathering intelligence from our enemies. It is a moral line. It is here that ends-not-justifying-the means would apply.

Nick #192 and Prole #207,

You two have turned the problem of unconstitutional vague inside-out:

>> Ignorance of the law *is* an excuse, and now that we know the law is vague, we can torture away and say we didn't know it was wrong! Nick #192

>> That holding does not mean that a person of ordinary intelligence must be able to know what it is prohibited by a law the first time he or she glances at it. Prole #207

Ignorance of the law has nothing to do with the question of whether a law is unconstitutionally vague, and I claimed nothing of the sort. The legal principle is whether a law is valid, not whether certain conduct is excused. It’s a legal question, not a factual one. The law is invalid if it fails the first prong, tested against a hypothetical “person of ordinary intelligence”, and irrelevant to the defendant in a particular case.

Prole #207,

Sometimes you’re a radical and sometimes, such as when we can pin you down to actually adopt a specific position, surprisingly not. On the other hand, you always argue like a radical, putting forth a flood of data impossible to connect to whatever position you might be advocating. Examples this rest day: your 1944 parable about Fritz and Jerry (post #148), your quotation from an unnamed law (post #193), then after me criticizing you for coloring outside the lines (post #196), your bulky quotation about fish and wildlife (post #207), and your massive quote trivially supporting one sentence of mine by Ogrisseg (post #208). As Barry has shown, you are practicing Saul Alinsky’s tactic in his Rules 4 and 8, flame the opposition. You are the champion flamer, maple leaf division.

Sometimes your positions might warrant being called radical if you were a USian (I dislike the word American, and here even North American doesn’t work). If I were to argue that Canada should adopt freedoms, as in speech or free enterprise, or that Canada should show some courage and commitment beyond tokenism to the Western way of life against international terrorism, that would be radical for Canada and for Canadians. But since I am a USian, its only criticism. So when you chime in with radicals like rhowk, you get might technically deserve a pass, but instead get tarred with the same brush.

Another feature of radicalism is the practiced refusal to argue rationally, to reason from facts, concisely and using precise words. The U.S. doesn’t have much of a radical right, that being limited to a handful of ineffective, self-proclaimed Libertarians, so radical dialog here is pretty much owned by the left today. The notion that waterboarding is torture is an example, a politically correct tenet of the left and the weapon du jour against the U.S. along with the evil facility at 20ºN. As radical spokesmen Nance and rhoak admitted, sometimes waterboarding is “justified”, i.e., is not torture. The Terrorist Act is unconstitutionally vague at this juncture because it failed the second prong of the Grayned test: to lead to a regulation explicitly banning waterboarding. So when you persist in referring to waterboarding as torture, you’re functioning as a radical leftist, employing proof by repetition, actually a lie. Maybe Barry can tell us if Alinsky had rules for radicals to cover lying and propagandizing.

moak #231,

Apparently you’ve presumed to know what torture is. Good for you.

In closing;

Should the U.S. Supreme Court decide again to the contrary, it would be just another random outcome. Put it on the Dred Scott pile. We have three branches of government, comprising two de jure and two more de facto legislative bodies, all equally chancy.

#228 - Darije

If you want a perspective on the comparative efficacy of torture vs non-torture based techniques here is the view of someone with actual experience in the field:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-alexander/my-written-testimony-to-t_b_203269.html

I know Barry will be in a lather that its from the huffington post but it is an actual transcript of the testimony, and hey admit it, its fun to watch Barry burst a pipe and start blaming lefties for sunspots.

Googling Matthew Alexander and torture will net you even more info both of his actual experience as a professional interrogator, and his views about torture and waterboarding in particular. He is not alone. I have posted before links to articles by brave men like Col. Stuart Herrington, and Malcolm Nance who hold both similar views and pedigrees. Matthew Alexander specifically addresses the "ticking timebomb" argument that the pro torture folks are grasping too as a last false hope for their arguments.

I have yet to see anyone on the pro torture side either impugn their resumes or views, or put forward anyone of similar stature who substantially or effectively counters their position.

If you have the time, I would recommend reading the testimony and indeed any article you find via a search as a whole. It certainly opened my eyes as to what actual effective interrogation techniques entail, it is not what you see on the TV. And it is certainly not what the Rush Limbaugh robots on the site are constantly regurgitating about.

rhowk,

I explained my positions carefully: specifically why I think you are a leftist, and what human rights disasters can be empirically blamed on leftist political activity, beyond any shadow of a doubt. Your refutation is to mock me. In so doing, you support my contention, for which I thank you.

It looks like we get four more days of this (haven't read the newest article yet) but let me use small words, formatted specifically for you: If. torture. doesn't. work. there. is. no. reason. to. use. it.

It. appears. to. have. worked. in. the. past. It. is. currently. illegal.

Beyond that, there are, oh, about 25 paragraphs above of closely argued text using this technique we Conservatives call Reason, and which Leftists call torture. It's manifestly quite painful for them to behold the logic of their positions demonstrated for them, conclusions drawn from their own premises, and followed by the obvious fact that their positions lead, in the real world, to the contrary of their stated intention, consistently, and damn near necessarily.

Moak,

I have room in my worldview for people I would call liberals. I don't consider Leftists to be liberals. If you are consistent in your positions, and are willing to subject them to the real world test of if you ideas are actually working to accomplish what you say your stated aim is, then I am happy to include you within my political spectrum. Obviously, there is nothing at all good about torture. It is an awful, awful thing, and the only argument to be made for it is it COULD, in some cases, be LESS EVIL, that the alternative.

Jeff,

Here is an interesting link: http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm

Here are two quotes from the most important political influence on our current President:

"A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism." p.10

"An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations...." pp.10-11

And: {from the article}"Like Alinsky, Mikhail Gorbachev followed Gramsci, not Lenin. In fact, Gramsci aroused Stalins's wrath by suggesting that Lenin's revolutionary plan wouldn't work in the West. Instead the primary assault would be on Biblical absolutes and Christian values, which must be crushed as a social force before the new face of Communism could rise and flourish."

The guy on that video was an incredible tool. His rhetorical devices were really incredibly skewed. Anyways, I hope crossfit doesn't become a vehicle for a rediculous neoconservative viewpoint.

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