Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

Take it back- shouldn't have let the women out of the Afghan houses- big mistake:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../ixportal.html

• Afghan housewife admits serial killing of 27 men
  
  A housewife in Afghanistan, where crime used to be almost unheard of, has become one of the world's most prolific women serial killers after admitting that she murdered at least 27 men.
  
  The bodies of 18 men were found buried in the backyard of her home in the eastern city of Jalalabad. A further six corpses were found in the yard of a property in Kabul. Another corpse, that of Gul's 60-year-old first husband, was subsequently discovered under the floor of her Jalalabad home while two other bodies were found elsewhere.
  
  "She has admitted she killed them," said Gen Mohammed Zahir Nahem, senior investigator for Afghanistan's National Security Directorate. Most of Gul's offences are believed to have been committed since the Taliban fled the 2001 American invasion. Crime was virtually non-existent during the fundamentalist militia's rule. Police say most of the victims of Gul and her accomplices were taxi drivers.

RINO
 

What is RINO?

And ensure. But you are correct. It's why the pendulum will probably swing back, unfortunately just at the time that the irresponsible tax cut/budget shit is hitting the fan. God, politics is depressing. (Contrast this with "God, sex is fun." Maybe I should restrict myself to the happy FB.)

oops
 

wrong board.

RINO
 

"Republican in Name Only", but I wasn't sure who Spanky was charging with being a RINO. Most of the Rs around here do a good job of reinforcing what I think the Republican party stands for.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

So then what you're saying is that it's okay to torture grown women and men (and presumably teens, since so many of them have been detained as well) in order to protect their little girls?

Will you be the one to explain to them that their Daddies had to die in order to protect you so your little girls can have a father?

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

Ah, I see. Err on the side of life and all that. Thanks for making this clear.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

That's not what I said at all, and you know it. I'm getting a little angry here......

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

I didn't duck the question. You're wrong. Bilmore's wrong. Hank's wrong.

Count me as one of the pussified liberals. Torture is wrong. Morally, absolutely, completely. It doesn't matter who does it. It doesn't matter what the end is that the torture is supposed to serve. We cheapen ourselves as human beings when we seek to rationalize or condone it. We weaken the very liberties we are fighting to preserve when we abuse the liberties of others.

If you lie down with dogs, you come up with fleas.

If I wasn't being clear enough before, I apologize for the miscommunication on my part.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

I doubt that Dershowitz is a "fan" of torture. I'm no "fan" of dropping bombs on cities. Problem is, you need to take a stand that goes beyond the weenie "I'm not a fan of bad things". Sometimes you need to do bad things to stop badder things. Saying that you're not a fan of bad things is a copout.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

ARRRGGGGHHHGGGHH!!!!

Billy bob at Abu gharib did bad- and if commanders told him to do bad they should go to prison- just like Jack nicholsen.

But the guys who went to Gitmo were a high probabilty of livelong Jihadi guys. You know, guys who would fly a plane into a building. Should we let them go, or Should we try and get what we can out of them?

Can we torture OBL if we catch him, to get info on cells here?

What's fucked up about those guys is we are apparently letting many of them go- Wanna bet they'll be back in the news someday?

RINO
 

You're catching on, now.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

I understand what you said, Hank. You see the issue as presenting a paradox. I'm trying to get you confront that paradox.

You see, I believe that liberty and human dignity are moral absolutes. I don't think we have the power, the resources, or the will to enforce them everywhere they are being ignored or abused. But I do believe that every time we, as a nation, allow ourselves to set aside these liberties, we weaken our argument to the world that they are absolutes and worth fighting and dying for.

Your life, on a global stage, has no more intrinsic value than that of any man in Abu Ghraib. The only thing that gives one life more value than another (if indeed, it can be said that one life can have more value than another) is what you do with it. When you allow yourself to think that using the tactics of the enemy can be in any way justified by the fact that you are trying to vanquish him, how can you declare your cause just?

If that angers you, so be it. I get annoyed from time to time by your constant gratuitous digs at me. At least this is something worth getting mad about. I guess you're just a better person than I am.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

30 detainees were just released from Gitmo because the military's own internal process, in which they did not even get to see and rebut the evidence against them or have a lawyer, determined there was no basis for holding them.

So, how do you feel about the torture that's been directed at these 30 guys? Should we explain to their children that this is the way the US operates when its at war, but it doesn't represent what they should expect from Democracy?

I have two practical reasons for thinking this is very bad policy: I believe it increases the risk to our own soldiers and because I don't think it accomlishes much - torture by its nature provides mediocre, difficult to verify information and information that is partial and disjointed. The torturee must tell us something, he believes, for the torture to stop, but is not going to tell us everything because that will put him in more danger.

On the other hand, the person who is convinced to switch sides or the person who is able to infiltrate produces very good, consistent and verifiable information.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

No, Bilmore. Doing bad things to stop badder things is a part of the way the world works. Rationalizing doing the badder things yourself in order to stop someone else from doing them is a copout.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

2.

2. And we as a supposedly civilized nation need to demand a full and transparent accounting. The military is being evasive. You guys control the government, so it's up to you to demand that the military fess up.

Experience has proven that there are better means than torture to get information out of prisoners. Not only is torture immoral, it is unreliable and inefficient. I thought you guys were about efficiency in government.

I'd sure like to, but see my comments above. I actually hope we kill him rather than capture him. That saves us the messy "what do we do with him now?" problems that the administration always seems to stumble on.

Wanna bet they all have GPS transmitters embedded in their asses?