Happy Martin Luther King Day!

[DaJudge]

Hmm, I don't think I agree with your line of reasoning here. The fact that our nation has resorted to torture reflects badly on us. It is a disgrace.

Horse puckey. Torture has been greatly defined downward. It's not like we've been putting these people in Iron Maidens or on the rack.

[EagerBeaver]

Hmm, I don't think I agree with your line of reasoning here. The fact that our nation has resorted to torture reflects badly on us. It is a disgrace.

Horse puckey. Torture has been greatly defined downward. It's not like we've been putting these people in Iron Maidens or on the rack.

You know, we coulda just shot em all dead.

[Poimen]

Poimen, does Obama's having Warren pray at his inauguration not also make him an accomplice in a pro-Christian demonstration siding with the faithful????

So, if we score him Apostasy 1, Fidelity 1, does the tie then go to the runner (pardon the pun)?

cute quip there.

Now, as to the question, I must answer from a defense of the faith here, and not the politically correct. To be an accomplice with an apostate to the faith, and thus implicitly align with or embrace his deviant beliefs, is to forfeit and negate any merit in the recogniiton of what may otherwise be considered truly Christian.

[Tim Elston]

Now, as to the question, I must answer from a defense of the faith here, and not the politically correct. To be an accomplice with an apostate to the faith, and thus implicitly align with or embrace his deviant beliefs, is to forfeit and negate any merit in the recogniiton of what may otherwise be considered truly Christian.

I assume this applies for you to Bush, too, right?

[Dr. Ron]

As one who participated in the Civil Rights movement, I think I can speak to this with some degree of rationale.

I was in many of the "protests" for civil rights for all people. I walked in some of the walks...pastored an all black congregation, and have lived with and around the black culture all my life.

My father would not allow Ed Jones to be billeted in a "whore house" because blacks could not stay in white hotels. He brought him home to stay with us during the convention....

I traveled the globe with Harrison Price staying in the homes and eating the fare of the black culture in many lands.

I celebrate the freedom. I seriously think they should have called it "Rosa Parks Day" and given credit to that little frail lady who decided not to go to the back of the bus. MLK siezed the opportunity to make it a political stand (which I have already stated I approved) and Kennedy saw it as a political chess piece. Had he cared before that he would have done more.

So....I celebrate the freedom of the civil rights movement. I do admire MLK as a man of courage. I don't think he deserves a "day" in history.....especially since we no longer have Washinton's BD/ Lincoln's BD.....

AS for the inauguration, I have never watched one and will certainly not watch this one. In this time of crisis, God OBama would have won the hearts of millions....maybe even mine....if he had said " I will do like Roosevelt and have a ceremony in the Oval Office" and then get to work. To spend 170Mil is crazy.....and simply unrealistic.....especially since a lot of the money is being given by people who have just been bailed out by Bush........

God help this poor diluded country.

[Poimen]

I assume this applies for you to Bush, too, right?

Yes. Absolutely. And I hope I have not now or ever said anything that would have given you or anyone else the indication I felt otherwise. I care not who the man is, nor the office he holds, if he claims to be a follower of Christ while at the same time condoning and accepting those who have apostasized from the faith yet still claiming the name of Christ then he has fellowship with unrighteousness, communion with darkness, concord with belial, and part with the infidel.

[Tim Elston]

Yes. Absolutely. And I hope I have not now or ever said anything that would have given you or anyone else the indication I felt otherwise. I care not who the man is, nor the office he holds, if he claims to be a follower of Christ while at the same time condoning and accepting those who have apostasized from the faith yet still claiming the name of Christ then he has fellowship with unrighteousness, communion with darkness, concord with belial, and part with the infidel.

Thanks. I can respect that.

[Jennifer Smith]

Hmm, I don't think I agree with your line of reasoning here. The fact that our nation has resorted to torture reflects badly on us. It is a disgrace.

Horse puckey. Torture has been greatly defined downward. It's not like we've been putting these people in Iron Maidens or on the rack.

Horse puckey, that's a fun word...! I guess that is your opinion...I just

don't happen to agree. Water boarding... a form of torture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

[scooter]

OH NO!! PLEASE WHATEVER YOU DO!!!

Don't Sprinkle me with water!!!

[Shellie]

Torture/shmorture

My son thinks one week without his Xbox is torture, but he sure does behave better after he's experienced it.

[Dr. Ron]

I dare say that the majority of those who are appalled at "water boarding" as a form of torture haven't a clue what it really is.

But the media has made it out to be equal to driving bamboo splinters under the finger nails.

[scooter]

I'm not saying that it could not fall under some broad definition of torture, ie; Chinese water torture, drip, drip, drip..., but the picture with the flower sprinkler put me over the edge.

What I am saying is we as a nation, didn't go rounding up innocent people for sucking goat milk..

So the whole torturing innocent men junk, is just that, junk.

[dolfan]

Cheney said the other night on TV that it was used between 1 and 3 times.

Unless the tactic is prolonged or involves severe electrical shock or burning, it doesn't meet my personal definition of torture when it comes to getting info on terrorism. My definition would change, of course, as the stakes go down. And up.

[Jennifer Smith]

I dare say that the majority of those who are appalled at "water boarding" as a form of torture haven't a clue what it really is.

But the media has made it out to be equal to driving bamboo splinters under the finger nails.

See wikipedia link...

It can cause physical damage, certainly psychological.

[Tim Elston]

Unless the tactic is prolonged or involves severe electrical shock or burning, it doesn't meet my personal definition of torture when it comes to getting info on terrorism. My definition would change, of course, as the stakes go down. And up.

The Wikipedia article Bagram torture and prisoner abuse documents two homicides by U.S. military torture.

Damien Corsetti gave an interview in which he claimed regular physical abuse that was not accompanied even by interrogation.

A couple of years ago I heard an interview of Benamar Benatta, who claimed that he was regularly beaten and kicked for five years in U.S. prisons in order to extract terrorist information from him, even though he had been cleared by the FBI and INF of any connection to 9/11 within only a few months of his illegal extradition from Canada. This U.S. Department of Justice training report against abuse mentions that "the Benatta case is one of many examples in which particular arms of the criminal justice system—-law enforcement, prosecution, INS agents—-target individuals based on inadequate or incomplete information on the assumption that further incriminating information (that is, giving up names of associates) can be squeezed out of them while they are in custody." The references to "overreactive responses" and trying to "sqeeze out" information appear to be incidental or intentional confirmation of Benatta's story of physical abuse.

These incidents happened in part because the Bush Administration in its early years argued for this definition of torture in the "standards of conduct for interrogation": "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Parse that definition carefully and you find that any practice up to but not including death may fall outside the legal definition of torture.


As for waterboarding, the article Waterboarding: Still Torture After All These Years notes that waterboarding was regularly practised by the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis, and that the United States tried and convicted Japanese soldiers of inflicting it on U.S. soldiers as a war crime.

As for Dick Cheney's claim, that man lost his credibility when he, according to the U.S. Senate's Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials were Substantiated by Intelligence Information Together with Additional and Minority Views, falsified intelligence to drum up support for the Iraq War. (See summaries of this report in my post here). Intelligence officers have claimed in an interview with ABC News, albeit anonymously, that more instances of waterboarding occurred. And this critique astutely asks an obvious question: Does Hayden's and Cheney's claim to only three occasions of waterboarding foreclose it's occurrence as contracted out to third parties?

Dolfan, this is not, on my part, a matter of one-ups-manship. It is a serious policy issue that deserves careful consideration. My impression is that the mortal standard of torture defined by the Beebee memo was used either explicitly or tacitly to promote excessive physical and phychological abuse, issuing in at least two cases of homicide. To downplay what happened at Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, and to Benatta is, in my opinion, moral and civil dereliction.