Letters to the Editor
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If it were me
I have breathing difficulties sometimes and can panic if I'm not getting enough air. Suffocation and drowning are two phobias for me. This torture would certainly work on me, and quickly! I'm a Christian, and I would agree to become a Muslim in order to avoid this! Torture definitely would not be getting the truth out of me; it would just be getting me to comply with others' wishes.
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THE BANALITY OF EVIL
It is not so long ago at all, nor so distant, nor so foreign at all. The questions were not so different, the needed distinctions not so different at all.
Hannah Arendt wrote so in "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." George Orwell wrote in "1984." And there are others on the shelf. Dusty and despised in their old age.
The questions and the answers are familiar. We have heard them before. We have spoken them before. One need only choose now where to stand. More of the same? Or a triumph in what it means to be human? How many more chances will we have? How many more mistakes can we make?
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Rich Gibson
Am I missing something important here? Is there something I am missing?
It's fairly obvious that you have never been in the military.
If you would like to know how *real* military officers feel about torture and the current leadership of the military then I suggest you read this milblog:
http://www.intel-dump.com/
The owner of the blog is a lawyer and military officer, I think you will find some of the most intelligent and informed commentary on things military that you have ever read.
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No shame, no guilt
What gets me about the torture debate in America is how openly and casually these techniques are discussed.
On one level, this is a good thing (free speech and all that), but it's really quite scary as well. Most, if not all regimes that employ torture now or have in the past, deny it and try to hide it. They do this because they know it is shameful and is not the mark of a civilized society.
But in America, people like Giuliani (who is a presidential candidate for God's sake) don't even realize there's anything particularly wrong with it. Or, by Orwellian doublethink, say that it's wrong except if Americans are doing it when, of course, it's not torture at all.
And Americans want somebody like this as their president?
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Waterboard Guiliani
If these politicians think that waterboarding isn't torture then on what grounds would they refuse to be submitted to the practice themselves? The questioning would be simple in this case: "Do you think waterboarding is torture?". If they are able to resist the technique, then all the better for their campaigns, but I doubt it. If they admit, under duress, that waterboarding is in fact torture then they are yielding on one of two points:
1) The technique is cruel and unusual punishment, and as such this whole ridiculous and abhorrent debate should be over.
2) They lied to make it stop, demonstrating how unreliable confessions are when they come under duress.
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Two things that strike me
(1) "I don't know if it's torture, I'm not familiar with the specifics" is a completely unacceptable answer - we wouldn't accept that level of ignorance, willful or not, on other campaign topics. ("How would I balance the budget? I don't know, I'm not real good with money...")
(2) If it's *not* torture, then why do it? How are we to believe that waterboarding, among our other loathsome techniques, is effective if it's *not* brutal? How does anything less than torture get our worst, most dedicated sworn enemies (i.e. everyone in Guantanamo) to give up their secrets if it's no more stressful than a 7-11 Big Gulp? If it's not torture, it's not going to work, so why do it? If it is torture, and you believe it's effective and justified, then argue *that* position - don't hide behind euphemisms and implausible ignorance.
The more I see of Giuliani, the less I like him - Bush's swagger and misplaced confidence, combined with Cheney's deeply evil love of authoritarianism - I can't think of a single front-runner from any election in the past 100 years, from either party, who could be a worse president.
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Elric O M's comment
I have to agree. We watch too much TV as a society, an unhealthy pastime, the hypnotic boob tube...the series 24 is FICTION people. 'Tickticktick....whoa....saved Amerika just in time for a word from our sponsor, Lockheed Martin...We Know Who We're Working For...and...Lunesta, Keeping America Doped and Subdued.
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This "formula for tyranny" has been embraced, not rejected, and the rest of the world knows it.
Does he think that laws and treaties apply only to foreigners and not to Americans? Or that the president can abrogate those laws and treaties at will?
Umm... yes.
That is a formula for tyranny -- and it was rejected by Republicans and Democrats alike, all much better men than he.
Umm... no. That is a policy position that has been the current administration's modus operandi since the second they announced that their detainees were "enemy combatants" who were not covered by the Geneva Convention, and has continued through their entire management of their "War on an Emotion", from Abu Ghraib, through Hadidtha, to Blackwater's repeated unpunished sins. The rules of law or justice or morality don't apply to foreigners.
Us "foreigners" - you know, the rest of the world - have been aware of this for quite some time. The beginning, in fact. And then you blame the resulting plummeting world opinion of the US on "hating your freedoms" or envy or god knows what.
There is a lot of simple cause-and-effect that Americans seem unable to recognize.
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That we are even talking about this issue
illuminates how awful we have become as Americans, how far down the ladder we have climbed, and how near the bottom of that downward spiral we are. That abrasive humans like giuliani are even positioned to make a run at leading our country is only the latest fact that proves my point.
He would have been more suited to run a Nazi SS hate division. He would be more at home in that scenario. And us? Well, we'd be more safe than if he were the leader of all the SS divisions, but not much...