I still remember that whole Mancow thing where he was comparing waterboarding to "splashing water in your face". Then he got a guy to do it to him as a demonstration and declared it's definitely torture in about 45 seconds
Hitchens (IIRC) did it too to prove it wasn't torture... and then recanted that view after it fucked him up permanently and he developed PTSD.
Also, I took a peek through the thread here and I'm glad we've already covered Krauthammer being an asshole on WaPo. Apparently he took a break from typing out his pro-Isreal stock in trade to visit this on us.
The most liked comment involved a self-identified Jew asking him if he didn't learn a fucking thing from the Holocaust. Warmed my heart to see that.
When did Hitchens recant his story? Or is that sarcssm.
I still remember that whole Mancow thing where he was comparing waterboarding to "splashing water in your face". Then he got a guy to do it to him as a demonstration and declared it's definitely torture in about 45 seconds
Hitchens (IIRC) did it too to prove it wasn't torture... and then recanted that view after it fucked him up permanently and he developed PTSD.
Also, I took a peek through the thread here and I'm glad we've already covered Krauthammer being an asshole on WaPo. Apparently he took a break from typing out his pro-Isreal stock in trade to visit this on us.
The most liked comment involved a self-identified Jew asking him if he didn't learn a fucking thing from the Holocaust. Warmed my heart to see that.
When did Hitchens recant his story? Or is that sarcssm.
To be clear, he meant Hitchens recanted the view that it wasn't torture. Hitchens is quite clear on his view that it is, in fact, torture.
In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me.
...
I was completely convinced that, when the water pressure had become intolerable, I had firmly uttered the pre-determined code word that would cause it to cease. But my interrogator told me that, rather to his surprise, I had not spoken a word. I had activated the “dead man’s handle” that signaled the onset of unconsciousness. So now I have to wonder about the role of false memory and delusion.
...
The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it. Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia.
The article also offers the simplest and most direct argument against the use of waterboarding or torture in general that I've read.
Against it, however, I call as my main witness Mr. Malcolm Nance. Mr. Nance is not what you call a bleeding heart. In fact, speaking of the coronary area, he has said that, in battlefield conditions, he “would personally cut bin Laden’s heart out with a plastic M.R.E. spoon.”
...
I passed one of the most dramatic evenings of my life listening to his cold but enraged denunciation of the adoption of waterboarding by the United States. The argument goes like this:
1. Waterboarding is a deliberate torture technique and has been prosecuted as such by our judicial arm when perpetrated by others.
2. If we allow it and justify it, we cannot complain if it is employed in the future by other regimes on captive U.S. citizens. It is a method of putting American prisoners in harm’s way.
3. It may be a means of extracting information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information. (Mr. Nance told me that he had heard of someone’s being compelled to confess that he was a hermaphrodite. I later had an awful twinge while wondering if I myself could have been “dunked” this far.) To put it briefly, even the C.I.A. sources for the Washington Post story on waterboarding conceded that the information they got out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “not all of it reliable.” Just put a pencil line under that last phrase, or commit it to memory.
4. It opens a door that cannot be closed. Once you have posed the notorious “ticking bomb” question, and once you assume that you are in the right, what will you not do? Waterboarding not getting results fast enough? The terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then, bring on the thumbscrews and the pincers and the electrodes and the rack.
I still remember that whole Mancow thing where he was comparing waterboarding to "splashing water in your face". Then he got a guy to do it to him as a demonstration and declared it's definitely torture in about 45 seconds
Hitchens (IIRC) did it too to prove it wasn't torture... and then recanted that view after it fucked him up permanently and he developed PTSD.
Also, I took a peek through the thread here and I'm glad we've already covered Krauthammer being an asshole on WaPo. Apparently he took a break from typing out his pro-Isreal stock in trade to visit this on us.
The most liked comment involved a self-identified Jew asking him if he didn't learn a fucking thing from the Holocaust. Warmed my heart to see that.
When did Hitchens recant his story? Or is that sarcssm.
I still remember that whole Mancow thing where he was comparing waterboarding to "splashing water in your face". Then he got a guy to do it to him as a demonstration and declared it's definitely torture in about 45 seconds
Hitchens (IIRC) did it too to prove it wasn't torture... and then recanted that view after it fucked him up permanently and he developed PTSD.
Also, I took a peek through the thread here and I'm glad we've already covered Krauthammer being an asshole on WaPo. Apparently he took a break from typing out his pro-Isreal stock in trade to visit this on us.
The most liked comment involved a self-identified Jew asking him if he didn't learn a fucking thing from the Holocaust. Warmed my heart to see that.
When did Hitchens recant his story? Or is that sarcssm.
Per wikipedia - "Following five years of defending the U.S. practice of waterboarding prisoners of war, Hitchens was asked by Vanity Fair to experience waterboarding for himself at a U.S. Army training facility."
I found references to articles he wrote for Slate that defended it as 'extreme interrogation' and he was a general supporter of the Iraq war and glossed over a lot of what happened at Abu Ghraib.
As far I understand from watching Maddow the other night at least one guy was put in absolute solitary confinement for a couple of months, then water boarded for a few days and only after that they started asking questions.
Which doesn't seem very effective in terms of finding that ticking time bomb or whatever other imminent threat.
What's sad is that he's lucky compared to how others were tortured. That's how fucked up the situation was.
I don't know about luckier. Solitary confinement is about one of the worst things you can do to a person.
As far I understand from watching Maddow the other night at least one guy was put in absolute solitary confinement for a couple of months, then water boarded for a few days and only after that they started asking questions.
Which doesn't seem very effective in terms of finding that ticking time bomb or whatever other imminent threat.
What's sad is that he's lucky compared to how others were tortured. That's how fucked up the situation was.
I don't know about luckier. Solitary confinement is about one of the worst things you can do to a person.
In context, from articles I've read that is lucky. He wasn't chained to a ceiling and suffocated to death or stuck in a freezer. Not that what he went through wasn't inhumane and awful torture. No one should ever go through what they did to him.
That looks a lot like scapegoating to me. Not saying what she did was acceptable, just that trying to blame an individual rather than the institution (or even general attitudes towards Islam in the USA) is... unconvincing.
Well, it's not saying that it was all one person, but that this one person did a lot of dumb shit, and apparently is still working in intelligence in a very prominent place
Except that the person in question was promoted to general. She should've faced a military tribunal, dishonorably discharged, or at the very least, forced to retire. But no, she was promoted to general instead.
My cousin was forced to retire as a navy captain (equivalent to a colonel in the army), even though he had an exemplary record. But there just happened to be other captains with even better records to promote upwards to admiral.
So how the hell does being intimately involved in the torture scandals not count against you, in a promotion to general?
Fucked if I know. This whole thing baffles me, including why this isn't a hundred-page thread here.
Is it that there's little to debate on torture (it's bad), or is it just that people feel really ashamed about this and don't want to talk about it?
This should he the greatest scandal since... forever. For me it's a bigger deal than Watergate, or Oliver North's shit. Certainly more than Bill Clinton's dickananigans. Why isn't it rocking the nation?
Fucked if I know. This whole thing baffles me, including why this isn't a hundred-page thread here.
Is it that there's little to debate on torture (it's bad), or is it just that people feel really ashamed about this and don't want to talk about it?
This should he the greatest scandal since... forever. For me it's a bigger deal than Watergate, or Oliver North's shit. Certainly more than Bill Clinton's dickananigans. Why isn't it rocking the nation?
Because, according to polls, more than 80 percent support it.
Fucked if I know. This whole thing baffles me, including why this isn't a hundred-page thread here.
Is it that there's little to debate on torture (it's bad), or is it just that people feel really ashamed about this and don't want to talk about it?
This should he the greatest scandal since... forever. For me it's a bigger deal than Watergate, or Oliver North's shit. Certainly more than Bill Clinton's dickananigans. Why isn't it rocking the nation?
Because, according to polls, more than 80 percent support it.
Except that the person in question was promoted to general. She should've faced a military tribunal, dishonorably discharged, or at the very least, forced to retire. But no, she was promoted to general instead.
My cousin was forced to retire as a navy captain (equivalent to a colonel in the army), even though he had an exemplary record. But there just happened to be other captains with even better records to promote upwards to admiral.
So how the hell does being intimately involved in the torture scandals not count against you, in a promotion to general?
1) As mentioned, torture is popular.
2) She knows where the bodies are. Literally and metaphorically.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I still remember that whole Mancow thing where he was comparing waterboarding to "splashing water in your face". Then he got a guy to do it to him as a demonstration and declared it's definitely torture in about 45 seconds
Hitchens (IIRC) did it too to prove it wasn't torture... and then recanted that view after it fucked him up permanently and he developed PTSD.
Also, I took a peek through the thread here and I'm glad we've already covered Krauthammer being an asshole on WaPo. Apparently he took a break from typing out his pro-Isreal stock in trade to visit this on us.
The most liked comment involved a self-identified Jew asking him if he didn't learn a fucking thing from the Holocaust. Warmed my heart to see that.
When did Hitchens recant his story? Or is that sarcssm.
I do hate how drone strikes are being compared to torture. Because while drone strikes are nebulous legal reasoning for extra judicial killing, they are in line with how america has dealt with "terrorists" in the modern age. I mean prior to drones it was cruise missiles and bombing campaigns, the method changes but its not like if we stopped using drones we'd stop blowing up our perceived enemies.
And they are in no way comparable to torturing people I mean I never want to die, but I'll take being incinerated over being tortured every fucking day of the week.
I wouldn't dispute that certain details in this redacted report amount to among the most morally-heinous state actions I've read about. But I would question the idea that torture is a new methodology for the United States.
The US also trained very many regimes in the art of torture for decades during the entire Cold War. I think what really changed under George W. Bush was the open, public legitimization of torture as US policy, which happened simultaneously as US mass media descended into a lot of brutal propaganda glorifying torture.
In terms of how they fall within the historical continuity, I would see torture and drone warfare as pretty similar; in a broad sense they resemble some actions of the past, but differ from those in terms of how they illustrate the recent tendency of the US to act more openly in defiance of international law. That's not to say that the US is more brutal exactly than in the past, just that its PR vis-a-vis international law, and how it portrays the legitimacy of its actions in those terms, is very different than in the past. At best, this means the US is becoming less hypocritical; at worst, open flaunting of criminality could empower even worse crimes than we've seen in the past. Hypocrisy is not a praiseworthy virtue, but a hypocritical regime that cares about its international image may be less prone to human rights abuses than an outright fascist regime that embraces criminality.
I'm appalled by these actions, but I also think they're a pale shadow of atrocities committed in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and many many more.
I'm appalled by these actions because I feel I am partly responsible - my government supported them, and my society has done little about them.
But i think you are displaying some bias here, or simple ignorance of the appalling things that have happened throughout history, if you think the CIA can compare to the Khmer Rouge.
It doesn't need to compare. Because it's not a torture pissing contest.
That's an odd and combative thing to say. I was addressing Asakolov's line 'amount to among the most morally heinous state actions I've read about'. I'm starting to see a lot of bias in his posts, and I wanted to address his comparison. if you have problems with comparisons, please direct your ire at him, not me.
I'm appalled by these actions, but I also think they're a pale shadow of atrocities committed in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and many many more.
I'm appalled by these actions because I feel I am partly responsible - my government supported them, and my society has done little about them.
But i think you are displaying some bias here, or simple ignorance of the appalling things that have happened throughout history, if you think the CIA can compare to the Khmer Rouge.
I'm not sure which 'atrocities' you're comparing here to the CIA's torture? Is the point that the CIA torture methods are less brutal than forms of torture used by others? Which methods are you specifically referring to?
That's an odd and combative thing to say. I was addressing Asakolov's line 'amount to among the most morally heinous state actions I've read about'. I'm starting to see a lot of bias in his posts, and I wanted to address his comparison. if you have problems with comparisons, please direct your ire at him, not me.
Could you explain particular inaccuracies that would be evidence of 'bias'?
My remark meant that some of specific methods of torture revealed in this report are very extreme, sadistic, and twisted even by standards of human history. If we're saying that torture is a specifically condemnable crime that is morally different than others, I am not aware of torture regimes that would be categorically worse regarding brutality of their torture methodology than what we've learned about the CIA.
I'm appalled by these actions, but I also think they're a pale shadow of atrocities committed in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and many many more.
I'm appalled by these actions because I feel I am partly responsible - my government supported them, and my society has done little about them.
But i think you are displaying some bias here, or simple ignorance of the appalling things that have happened throughout history, if you think the CIA can compare to the Khmer Rouge.
I'm not sure which 'atrocities' you're comparing here to the CIA's torture? Is the point that the CIA torture methods are less brutal than forms of torture used by others? Which methods are you specifically referring to?
You said the CIA's torture was among the worst you've ever heard of, to paraphrase. I think that's myopic in the extreme. I have no desire to defend the CIA, merely to correct your hyperbole. What they've done is appalling, but I think your view of it is very odd, to say the least.
You said the CIA's torture was among the worst you've ever heard of, to paraphrase. I think that's myopic in the extreme. I have no desire to defend the CIA, merely to correct your hyperbole. What they've done is appalling, but I think your view of it is very odd, to say the least.
Can you please be very specific regarding which torture methods were used by the Khmer Rouge that you believe were categorically worse than the methods used by the CIA revealed in the report?
The Wikipedia article you posted seems to mostly describe the exact same methods -- waterboarding, sexual assault, deprivation, forms of extreme emotional abuse.
It doesn't need to compare. Because it's not a torture pissing contest.
That's an odd and combative thing to say. I was addressing Asakolov's line 'amount to among the most morally heinous state actions I've read about'. I'm starting to see a lot of bias in his posts, and I wanted to address his comparison. if you have problems with comparisons, please direct your ire at him, not me.
One place where I strongly agree with him is the danger of the U.S. abandoning its "hypocrisy" and becoming a nation that openly advocates for things like torture. That's a dangerous road for many reasons.
That hypocrisy has actually been a source of positive tension in American politics since the very beginning. The Quakers to built the Abolitionist movement by stressing the contradictions between the freedoms Americans espoused and slavery. The African American civil rights movement - which started long before the 1950s - made progress because the nation's courts, politicians and diplomats could not sustain formal support of Jim Crow and maintain the nation's image at home and abroad. The same dynamics have worked for every social justice advance from the Suffragettes to labor activists to the gay rights movement.
That's one of the real dangers of outlets like Fox News. By acting as naked propagandists for the nation's authoritarians, they are legitimizing a wide range of evils in a way that the old school networks would never have done. Much like the Southern press in the run-up to the Civil War and during the Civil Rights movement, the right wing media has taken on itself to wash away the shame by demonizing the victims. By succeeding in preventing institutions from reforming by actively dismantling that tension between our ideals and realities, they stymy peaceful efforts to reform that work through the system.
You said the CIA's torture was among the worst you've ever heard of, to paraphrase. I think that's myopic in the extreme. I have no desire to defend the CIA, merely to correct your hyperbole. What they've done is appalling, but I think your view of it is very odd, to say the least.
Can you please be very specific regarding which torture methods were used by the Khmer Rouge that you believe were categorically worse than the methods used by the CIA revealed in the report?
The Wikipedia article you posted seems to mostly describe the exact same methods -- waterboarding, sexual assault, deprivation, forms of extreme emotional abuse.
I'm not going to walk you through the heinous details of every global atrocity ever, and the numbers and deeds involved, because I would be very depressed, possibly throw up, and I really do doubt that anyone who can find no substantial difference between (to name a random selection) Unit 731, the Khmer Rouge, Serbian rape camps, the goddamn Shoah and what happened at Guantanamo is likely to change their mind no matter what I say.
I'm not going to walk you through the heinous details of every global atrocity ever, and the numbers and deeds involved, because I would be very depressed, possibly throw up, and I really do doubt that anyone who can find no substantial difference between (to name a random selection) Unit 731, the Khmer Rouge, Serbian rape camps, the goddamn Shoah and what happened at Guantanamo is likely to change their mind no matter what I say.
I was specifically discussing torture and I can only assume you must have misunderstood my point if you are thinking I am comparing CIA torture to actions of genocide. I was discussing brutality of methodology of torture -- you are citing many examples of regimes that have used similar types of methodology perhaps on larger scale or for purposes you would describe as more evil, but not ones that appear in terms of their methodology of torture categorically distinct from the CIA. I don't know why someone would say that waterboarding, sexual assault, forms of twisted 'medical' torture, deprivation, and torturing innocent people to death are worse when others do it than when the CIA does it.
It doesn't need to compare. Because it's not a torture pissing contest.
That's an odd and combative thing to say. I was addressing Asakolov's line 'amount to among the most morally heinous state actions I've read about'. I'm starting to see a lot of bias in his posts, and I wanted to address his comparison. if you have problems with comparisons, please direct your ire at him, not me.
Actually, I feel like you're being overly combative regarding what some people subjectively consider heinous. It's not really a useful thing to discuss in this particular debate; torture is wrong, whether you feel like it's not as bad as what some other country did.
It doesn't need to compare. Because it's not a torture pissing contest.
That's an odd and combative thing to say. I was addressing Asakolov's line 'amount to among the most morally heinous state actions I've read about'. I'm starting to see a lot of bias in his posts, and I wanted to address his comparison. if you have problems with comparisons, please direct your ire at him, not me.
Actually, I feel like you're being overly combative regarding what some people subjectively consider heinous. It's not really a useful thing to discuss in this particular debate; torture is wrong, whether you feel like it's not as bad as what some other country did.
He made the comparison, not me. I thought it was short-sighted and biased, matching an agenda I've seen Asakolov pursue elsewhere, and wanted to correct him. I'm a little insulted by the 'torture is wrong' line. I am quite aware of that fact.
I've made my point though, and I'll bow out before I get further portrayed as a CIA apologist.
I'm not going to walk you through the heinous details of every global atrocity ever, and the numbers and deeds involved, because I would be very depressed, possibly throw up, and I really do doubt that anyone who can find no substantial difference between (to name a random selection) Unit 731, the Khmer Rouge, Serbian rape camps, the goddamn Shoah and what happened at Guantanamo is likely to change their mind no matter what I say.
I was specifically discussing torture and I can only assume you must have misunderstood my point if you are thinking I am comparing CIA torture to actions of genocide. I was discussing brutality of methodology of torture -- you are citing many examples of regimes that have used similar types of methodology perhaps on larger scale or for purposes you would describe as more evil, but not ones that appear in terms of their methodology of torture categorically distinct from the CIA. I don't know why someone would say that waterboarding, sexual assault, forms of twisted 'medical' torture, deprivation, and torturing innocent people to death are worse when others do it than when the CIA does it.
So now I'm not sure if you're entirely misinterpreting what I'm saying or if I'm entirely misinterpreting what you're saying, or both. If you are claiming to be 'correcting' someone while also engaging in personal attacks, please at least be more specific regarding which points you believe are incorrect, and why. I'm a lot more bothered by the irrationality here than the incivility.
It doesn't need to compare. Because it's not a torture pissing contest.
That's an odd and combative thing to say. I was addressing Asakolov's line 'amount to among the most morally heinous state actions I've read about'. I'm starting to see a lot of bias in his posts, and I wanted to address his comparison. if you have problems with comparisons, please direct your ire at him, not me.
Actually, I feel like you're being overly combative regarding what some people subjectively consider heinous. It's not really a useful thing to discuss in this particular debate; torture is wrong, whether you feel like it's not as bad as what some other country did.
He made the comparison, not me. I thought it was short-sighted and biased, matching an agenda I've seen Asakolov pursue elsewhere, and wanted to correct him. I'm a little insulted by the 'torture is wrong' line. I am quite aware of that fact.
I've made my point though, and I'll bow out before I get further portrayed as a CIA apologist.
I don't think you are a CIA apologist and have never portrayed you as one. Most of the time I find myself agreeing with you. And I'm not irate or even perturbed by your posts. I'm simply questioning the value of declaring someone's opinion of how heinous this particular torture is compared to others as objectively incorrect. Surely there is another way to repudiate his "agenda"?
Except that the person in question was promoted to general. She should've faced a military tribunal, dishonorably discharged, or at the very least, forced to retire. But no, she was promoted to general instead.
My cousin was forced to retire as a navy captain (equivalent to a colonel in the army), even though he had an exemplary record. But there just happened to be other captains with even better records to promote upwards to admiral.
So how the hell does being intimately involved in the torture scandals not count against you, in a promotion to general?
Promotion past a certain point is granted by congress, both in enlisted and commissioned positions. Giving a person a star is congress stating that they support that person's actions.
Also there's a shit ton of politics behind the scenes in anything involving promotion.
I don't think the article's proposal would be a useful narrative, since it focuses the problem on the doctors, not the CIA or the politicians who ordered torture.
Also, it's kind of a pointless semantic distinction. There isn't much difference between torturing to get information and torturing to get information while also hoping to learn more about how to torture effectively.
Posts
Well his initial view was that it wasn't torture, but he tried it out and came to the conclusion that it really, really is.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808
To be clear, he meant Hitchens recanted the view that it wasn't torture. Hitchens is quite clear on his view that it is, in fact, torture.
The article also offers the simplest and most direct argument against the use of waterboarding or torture in general that I've read.
Yes I remember this piece well. I just don't recall him stating that it wasn't torture.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808
the title of the article is literally "Believe me, It's Torture"
I found references to articles he wrote for Slate that defended it as 'extreme interrogation' and he was a general supporter of the Iraq war and glossed over a lot of what happened at Abu Ghraib.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Or at best, second hand via a close relation or some such. But yeah, more or less. It has to hit them close to home.
In context, from articles I've read that is lucky. He wasn't chained to a ceiling and suffocated to death or stuck in a freezer. Not that what he went through wasn't inhumane and awful torture. No one should ever go through what they did to him.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/unidentified-queen-torture
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/bin-laden-expert-accused-shaping-cia-deception-torture-program-n269551
That looks a lot like scapegoating to me. Not saying what she did was acceptable, just that trying to blame an individual rather than the institution (or even general attitudes towards Islam in the USA) is... unconvincing.
My cousin was forced to retire as a navy captain (equivalent to a colonel in the army), even though he had an exemplary record. But there just happened to be other captains with even better records to promote upwards to admiral.
So how the hell does being intimately involved in the torture scandals not count against you, in a promotion to general?
Is it that there's little to debate on torture (it's bad), or is it just that people feel really ashamed about this and don't want to talk about it?
This should he the greatest scandal since... forever. For me it's a bigger deal than Watergate, or Oliver North's shit. Certainly more than Bill Clinton's dickananigans. Why isn't it rocking the nation?
Because, according to polls, more than 80 percent support it.
Christ. Then you're fucked. Emigrate.
1) As mentioned, torture is popular.
2) She knows where the bodies are. Literally and metaphorically.
I wouldn't dispute that certain details in this redacted report amount to among the most morally-heinous state actions I've read about. But I would question the idea that torture is a new methodology for the United States.
The CIA organized torture, including gang rape, to interrogate prisoners of war in Vietnam.
https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/torture-report-revives-cia-s-rogue-image-1.9704900
The US also trained very many regimes in the art of torture for decades during the entire Cold War. I think what really changed under George W. Bush was the open, public legitimization of torture as US policy, which happened simultaneously as US mass media descended into a lot of brutal propaganda glorifying torture.
In terms of how they fall within the historical continuity, I would see torture and drone warfare as pretty similar; in a broad sense they resemble some actions of the past, but differ from those in terms of how they illustrate the recent tendency of the US to act more openly in defiance of international law. That's not to say that the US is more brutal exactly than in the past, just that its PR vis-a-vis international law, and how it portrays the legitimacy of its actions in those terms, is very different than in the past. At best, this means the US is becoming less hypocritical; at worst, open flaunting of criminality could empower even worse crimes than we've seen in the past. Hypocrisy is not a praiseworthy virtue, but a hypocritical regime that cares about its international image may be less prone to human rights abuses than an outright fascist regime that embraces criminality.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senator-mark-udall-says-cia-lying-n265636
I'm appalled by these actions because I feel I am partly responsible - my government supported them, and my society has done little about them.
But i think you are displaying some bias here, or simple ignorance of the appalling things that have happened throughout history, if you think the CIA can compare to the Khmer Rouge.
That's an odd and combative thing to say. I was addressing Asakolov's line 'amount to among the most morally heinous state actions I've read about'. I'm starting to see a lot of bias in his posts, and I wanted to address his comparison. if you have problems with comparisons, please direct your ire at him, not me.
How did the Khmer Rouge come up? Anyway, on the Khmer Rouge, they were supported by the United States even after they committed genocide.
http://www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/cambodia/tl04.html
I'm not sure which 'atrocities' you're comparing here to the CIA's torture? Is the point that the CIA torture methods are less brutal than forms of torture used by others? Which methods are you specifically referring to?
Could you explain particular inaccuracies that would be evidence of 'bias'?
My remark meant that some of specific methods of torture revealed in this report are very extreme, sadistic, and twisted even by standards of human history. If we're saying that torture is a specifically condemnable crime that is morally different than others, I am not aware of torture regimes that would be categorically worse regarding brutality of their torture methodology than what we've learned about the CIA.
You said the CIA's torture was among the worst you've ever heard of, to paraphrase. I think that's myopic in the extreme. I have no desire to defend the CIA, merely to correct your hyperbole. What they've done is appalling, but I think your view of it is very odd, to say the least.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum
Can you please be very specific regarding which torture methods were used by the Khmer Rouge that you believe were categorically worse than the methods used by the CIA revealed in the report?
The Wikipedia article you posted seems to mostly describe the exact same methods -- waterboarding, sexual assault, deprivation, forms of extreme emotional abuse.
One place where I strongly agree with him is the danger of the U.S. abandoning its "hypocrisy" and becoming a nation that openly advocates for things like torture. That's a dangerous road for many reasons.
That hypocrisy has actually been a source of positive tension in American politics since the very beginning. The Quakers to built the Abolitionist movement by stressing the contradictions between the freedoms Americans espoused and slavery. The African American civil rights movement - which started long before the 1950s - made progress because the nation's courts, politicians and diplomats could not sustain formal support of Jim Crow and maintain the nation's image at home and abroad. The same dynamics have worked for every social justice advance from the Suffragettes to labor activists to the gay rights movement.
That's one of the real dangers of outlets like Fox News. By acting as naked propagandists for the nation's authoritarians, they are legitimizing a wide range of evils in a way that the old school networks would never have done. Much like the Southern press in the run-up to the Civil War and during the Civil Rights movement, the right wing media has taken on itself to wash away the shame by demonizing the victims. By succeeding in preventing institutions from reforming by actively dismantling that tension between our ideals and realities, they stymy peaceful efforts to reform that work through the system.
I'm not going to walk you through the heinous details of every global atrocity ever, and the numbers and deeds involved, because I would be very depressed, possibly throw up, and I really do doubt that anyone who can find no substantial difference between (to name a random selection) Unit 731, the Khmer Rouge, Serbian rape camps, the goddamn Shoah and what happened at Guantanamo is likely to change their mind no matter what I say.
I was specifically discussing torture and I can only assume you must have misunderstood my point if you are thinking I am comparing CIA torture to actions of genocide. I was discussing brutality of methodology of torture -- you are citing many examples of regimes that have used similar types of methodology perhaps on larger scale or for purposes you would describe as more evil, but not ones that appear in terms of their methodology of torture categorically distinct from the CIA. I don't know why someone would say that waterboarding, sexual assault, forms of twisted 'medical' torture, deprivation, and torturing innocent people to death are worse when others do it than when the CIA does it.
Actually, I feel like you're being overly combative regarding what some people subjectively consider heinous. It's not really a useful thing to discuss in this particular debate; torture is wrong, whether you feel like it's not as bad as what some other country did.
He made the comparison, not me. I thought it was short-sighted and biased, matching an agenda I've seen Asakolov pursue elsewhere, and wanted to correct him. I'm a little insulted by the 'torture is wrong' line. I am quite aware of that fact.
I've made my point though, and I'll bow out before I get further portrayed as a CIA apologist.
I do not think that.
So now I'm not sure if you're entirely misinterpreting what I'm saying or if I'm entirely misinterpreting what you're saying, or both. If you are claiming to be 'correcting' someone while also engaging in personal attacks, please at least be more specific regarding which points you believe are incorrect, and why. I'm a lot more bothered by the irrationality here than the incivility.
I don't think you are a CIA apologist and have never portrayed you as one. Most of the time I find myself agreeing with you. And I'm not irate or even perturbed by your posts. I'm simply questioning the value of declaring someone's opinion of how heinous this particular torture is compared to others as objectively incorrect. Surely there is another way to repudiate his "agenda"?
Promotion past a certain point is granted by congress, both in enlisted and commissioned positions. Giving a person a star is congress stating that they support that person's actions.
Also there's a shit ton of politics behind the scenes in anything involving promotion.
I don't think the article's proposal would be a useful narrative, since it focuses the problem on the doctors, not the CIA or the politicians who ordered torture.
Also, it's kind of a pointless semantic distinction. There isn't much difference between torturing to get information and torturing to get information while also hoping to learn more about how to torture effectively.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html?ref=opinion&_r=2&assetType=opinion&referrer=