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Featured Who’s Right … Torture Defenders Or Critics?

Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by poncho, Dec 12, 2014.

  1. HankD

    HankD Well-Known Member
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    Because (and I've said this before) when the "chips are down" and we fallen human beings face annihilation, death and destruction (real or imagined) then we resort to the law of the jungle has been previously discussed "kill or be killed".

    e.g. I'm old enough to remember the results of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the world-wide rejoicing after the said disintegration of almost a quarter million people including women and children.

    The radiation sickness and horrific burns of the survivors was a hell on earth of torture and suffering for the Japanese people.

    There was virtually no concern of humanity for them (apart from scientific studies to measure the linear power of these bombs).

    The vicarious hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth came years later by those who could be little blamed for it.

    Matthew 23:30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

    The reality is we are ALL capable of the most dastardly of deeds.

    So, (IMO) poncho is correct in pointing that out to everyone.

    But that shouldn't stop anyone from supporting Care Net or seeking better and more effective ways of extracting information (with the use of chloral hydrate, sodium pentothal, etc...) from people.

    OK, Yes, the MK-Ultra projects of my day (I was in an Information/Intelligence unit in the USAF) went over the line but then again at that time the Russians were busy creating the dooms-day bomb "Tsar Bomba".

    The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked...


    HankD
     
  2. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    What did they do? Besides write a biased report without talking to the people involved?

    And here you are covering for them, so they can get away with it.

    A very useful tool indeed.
     
  3. Revmitchell

    Revmitchell Well-Known Member
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    It fits his conspiracy narrative.
     
  4. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    No I'm exposing them for their complicity in all this. You on the other hand are just playing the devil's advocate for half of them.

    Wrong is wrong. Their is no left or right to it.

    I remind the readers that the Rev has yet to show any proof to support his own conspiracy narrative about Russia invading Ukraine and shelling Ukrainians.

    Where's the proof Rev?
     
  5. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    Actually the bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities killed more people than the A-Bombs did. It is likely that more died in the fire bombing of Dresden than were killed by the A-Bombs.


    Following are two accounts of the fire-bombing of Dresden. The total number killed varies greatly with the sources!

    It is likely that the bombing of Dresden was unjustified however the A-Bombing of Japan brought that war to an end. It is estimated that millions would have died if invasion of Japan had been required. Anyone who doubts the deaths resulting from invasion should read an account of the battle for Okinawa.

    http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-okinawa-the-bloodiest-battle-of-the-pacific-war.htm

    Following is an interesting reflection on what could have happened in the event of invasion of Japan.
    http://www.combatsim.com/review.php?id=721
     
  6. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Yep. And it's wrong to defend such an obviously biased report.
     
  7. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    Obama just embraced one of the greatest torturers in the history of the planet so it must be okay if the Democrats put their arms around it.
     
  8. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Who's defending this report? Not me. But of course you'll accuse me of doing so because it's part of the mainstream narrative.

    I'm not defending either side. Both sides have engaged in this wrong doing.

    Both sides should be prosecuted for breaking the law.

    But they won't because they have guys like you that defend "your side" no matter how egregious their crimes are.
     
  9. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    We’ve Known for 1,700 Years that Torture Produces False Confessions

    Mark Costanzo (Claremont McKenna professor of psychology) and Ellen Gerrity (Duke University professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences) note in a study published in the journal Social Issues and Policy Review:

    As early as the third century A.D., the great Roman Jurist Ulpian noted that
    information obtained through torture was not to be trusted because some people are “so susceptible to pain that they will tell any lie rather than suffer it” (Peters, 1996). This warning about the unreliability of information extracted through the use of torture has echoed across the centuries.

    Lawrence Davidson – history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania – points out today:

    In 1764 Cesare Beccaria [an Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, and politician who had a profound effect on America’s Founding Fathers] published his groundbreaking work, On Crimes and Punishments. Beccaria had examined all the evidence available at that time and concluded that individuals under torture will tell their interrogators anything they want to hear, true or not, just to get the pain to stop.

    The successful and ruthless general Napolean Bonaparte wrote in 1798:

    The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/weve-known-1700-years-torture-produces-false-confessions.html
     
  10. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    How U.S. Torture Led to the Rise of ISIS

    We’ve previously noted that many members of ISIS were members of Saddam Hussein’s secular Baath Party who converted to radical Islam in American prisons.

    And we’ve documented that torture creates more terrorists. Indeed, Salon notes:

    Among the most notable victims of torture was Sayeed Qutb, the founding father of modern political jihadism. His 1964 book, “Milestones,” describes a journey towards radicalization that included rape and torture, sometimes with dogs, in an Egyptian prison. He left jail burning with the determination to wage transnational jihad to destroy these regimes and their backers, calling for war against all those who used these methods against Muslims

    ***

    “Milestones” remains one of the Arab world’s most influential books. Indeed, it was the lodestar of Al Qaeda leaders like Ayman Al-Zawahiri (who was also tortured in Egyptian jails) and the late Osama Bin Laden.

    In other words, it was torture which drove the founder of modern jihad to terrorism in the first place.

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/u-s-torture-program-created-isis.html
     
  11. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Fox Host Response To Torture - 'America Is Awesome!'

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtPxIJBcSs8
     
  12. HankD

    HankD Well-Known Member
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    Yes war is at its ugliest just before it ends.

    Seeing what the human race is capable of inflicting upon each other I have wondered if even satan was envious of the evil of the human race.

    However knowing what the human race is capable of I am still not a pacifist. If I were young again and the necessity arose I would probably do what I felt was my duty and go to war to protect family and country.

    HankD
     
  13. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    What if the war had nothing to do with protecting family and country?
     
  14. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    I agree! America is awesome and Feinstein and her democrat lackeys on the Senate Intelligence committee have deliberately done irreparable harm to the CIA and America and they don't care! Same thing happened in the 70's with the Frank Church Committee!
     
  15. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    You sure seem bound and determined not to let any facts, evidence or the majority of experts and their opinion get in the way of your defending communist Chinese torture methods.
     
  16. HankD

    HankD Well-Known Member
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    That is integral to the definition of war - a necessity to protect the homefront.

    Give me an example of what/which war scenario you mean poncho.

    HankD
     
  17. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    Then present evidence and facts from "your majority of experts!" If you are an expert you hide it well!
     
  18. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    I already have. You were probably to busy focusing all your attention on the "democrats" and committing the neocon/RINO talking points to memory to notice.

    It's interesting how you and a few others can now accept that which was considered unacceptable not so very long ago.

    I bet you were one of the chief opponents of these methods when they were being used by the communists on our people during the Vietnam intervention to gain false confessions.

    Pick any of our military interventions/nation building experiments since WWII.

    Do you remember that George W. Bush was elected to his first term partly because he ran on an anti interventionist/nation building platform? Then the neocons came out of the woodwork and took us on the road of pre emptive never ending regime change warfare and expanding authoritarian government.

    Conservatives became like frightened paranoid little girls jumping at shadows and ready to drop bombs on other's heads based on the flimsiest of evidence or none at all. And the "anti war" liberals? They went from being dead set against the new neocon military doctrine to being dead silent when "one of their own" continued down the same path.

    Looks like Brzezinski and Kissinger were right. Populations can be easily manipulated by fear of an "outside threat".
     
    #58 poncho, Dec 20, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 20, 2014
  19. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

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    Where? O Where has my little dog gone?

    You have no Idea what I considered acceptable in the past!

    The only torture I recall making the news was the presence of Jane Fonda in North Viet Nam!
     
  20. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    How mature.

    I remember the propaganda and subsequent mainstream consensus being against these methods being employed against our people over there.

    Knowing how easily you are swayed by the latest fact and evidence deficient propaganda coming from Washington and the "press" I just assumed you were "all in" on the anti torture bandwagon back then. And yes back then there was evidence of torture and mistreatment. Only back then we actually called these methods torture instead of using the "liberal" art of applying euphemisms to make the same methods sound a bit kinder and gentler because "we" have now used them on others.

    Is this an admission of senility? Or are you telling me that you choose not to remember it because it might harm the position you have taken to accept these communist methods that were designed to elicit false confessions from prisoners?

    Don't feel you have to hurry to respond this. I understand it must be a bit uncomfortable and confusing for you to suddenly have to think outside the left vs right paradigm after all those years of learning how to base your arguments against the other side instead of history and all the evidence. Learning new ways are always a bit intimidating at first. :smilewinkgrin:
     
    #60 poncho, Dec 20, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 20, 2014
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