Immunity for all ,the Clintons,the Bushes get the truth and prosecute only for anyone who isn't honest and forthcoming about the whole mess.

I'm actually with agreement with you on this point. If we had a functioning political/legal system, prosecutions would be warranted, and salutary. Given the state of things, though, I'd prefer a truth commission... and yes, I know the use of the term "truth" pushes buttons, but I'm using it in the South Africa sense: testimony, immunity, amnesty. It works.

We need to know what happened so we can move on. Not that I think there's a snowball's chance in Guantánamo of it ever taking place, but I think it'd be our best chance of actually healing as a society, rather than just enduring another Clinton-impeachment style clusterfuck.

Dude -- Rape is Clinton, torture is Bush. You need to get your presidents straight.

Good to know you're just morally unserious, and not here to make a real point.

Troll on, "dude."

using torture has nothing to do with any kind of utility but is more about asserting dominance, power and authority

Precisely, which is why I analogize it to rape. The scary thing is how quickly the moral taboo against justifying torture fell away... and how tenuous a grasp so many among us have on their humanity.

Were it not for Mona's timely exploration of the potential use of her coochie as supplementary carry-on luggage, I can't tell you how depressed I'd be.

It's nice around here when the trolls go home.

I find myself obsessively pondering what I could and could not, er, hide there.

The "pre-menopausal" bit was not the TMI part.

Poor old Ban Ki-moon. He tried to make his voice heard just before the ceasefire, saying Israel's troops had acted "outrageously" and should be "punished" for the third school killing. Some hope. At a Beirut press conference, he admitted he had failed to get a call through to Israel's Foreign Minister to complain.

It was pathetic. When I asked Mr Ban if he would consider a UN war crimes tribunal in Gaza, he said this would not be for him to "determine". But only a few journalists bothered to listen to him and his officials were quickly folding up the UN flag on the table. About time too. Bring back the League of Nations. All is forgiven.

http://tinyurl.com/84dp4z - at sig

Could we, maybe, create a parallel UT comments section, and leave this one for all the "You're a bunch of anti-Semites!!1!" people and all the "Israel controls the Universe!1!!" people to argue it out?

Srsly. The 9/11 Truthers can stay, too.

I have to assume that you either didn't read my earlier comment, or that you have a completely different idea of what it means to be human than I do.

I am assuming by "some water in their sinuses" you are referring to the practice hideously referred to as "waterboarding." I'm sure you know it's not merely putting "some water in [someone's] sinuses," and you think that you're being provocative in this group.

Explain to me, if you can, why torture is any different than rape. Help me understand why one is acceptable behavior for a human being, and why one isn't.

Convince me you don't have an ounce of moral seriousness. Because otherwise: you, Steve in Dallas, are a motherfucking monster.

How does your story end?

And why did you bring it up?

They have to decide how badly they want information. Hopefully, they can buy it for a few hundred dollars.

Steve, you've threatened to leave before, and you hung around, so I'm assuming you're still here. It's all right. These letters have that effect on people. :-)

Anyway, I'm really not sure where you're going with your little tale, but in the context of what we've been talking about all afternoon, I'm assuming that the next step, if they can't buy the information, is to begin beating the shit out of the women. Or worse.

If pain brought honesty, this might have the makings of a challenging moral quandary, but unfortunately all pain brings is the overwhelming desire for the pain to stop. And, despite how "simple" human nature is in the abstract, in reality, people do all kinds of things when in terrible psychological or physical pain.

So, if these kids choose your option "B," in addition to disfiguring their own souls, they have the difficult task of deciding whether to believe the tortured women or not. The women could have said whatever they thought the kids wanted to hear, which may or may not save lives.

But I don't put much stock in the utilitarian argument, Steve. Torture is wrong for the same reason that rape is wrong. Full stop. If you can find a reason to torture someone, you can sure as shit find a reason to rape someone. And I have no qualms in calling that reasoning inhuman.

Have a good evening, man.

Because waterboarding is more effective than those things.

My gracious, what a wondrous and magical (and capacious) place your ass must be: for you can pull out of it assertions to win any argument, at a moment's notice!

It's simple!

Alles sollte so einfach wie möglich gemacht sein, aber nicht einfacher. -- Ablert Eistein