Administration and Congress broker torture deal.

[Art Sandusky 0]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/15/tor...bill/index.html

 

Beyond pathetic that we'd even have to discuss making a compromise on TORTURE, but I'm glad the United States of America has finally come out and said "torturing people is bad." Not like torture being a bad thing was ever implied or anything...

 

If this is going to be real and have some teeth, we need to be very explicit in the guidelines of interrogation, or else it's going to be stretched beyond its boundaries (which is what got us into this mess in the first place).

[SuperJerk 0]

Of course, there's no shortage of people claiming that banning torture endangers our troops.

 

CNN had a big piece on how Bush was claiming victory because of the compromise, even though he's actually just caving in (again). He seems to do that alot, they noted. The examples then went on and on for about 5 minutes. It was hilarious.

[Vyce 0]

It all depends upon what you define as torture. If you mean breaking someone's kneecaps in order to get them to talk, okay, that's something we can agree isn't the way to go (though, yes, I know there are some arguments in favor of using any means necessary in certain doomsday scenarios, such as a terrorist having info on an imminent nuclear attack or something, but I'm talking more generally).

 

If you define torture as keeping a guy awake for 24 hours straight with constant interrogation, with only a little water and virtually no food during the interrogation, then there's a disconnect. It's disingenuous as all hell to say the Bush administration supports torture. It's that the administration may differ in opinion as to whether certain interrogation practices are really torture. That's a legitimate question. I approved of representative Hunter standing up and voicing a concern as to whether this legislation is going to ban certain proven, effective interrogation techniques as 'torture'.

 

It all depends on how torture is defined. That is THE problem the Administration had with the legislation. And please, for the love of god, let's be HONEST here and admit that yes, torture can actually be defined TOO BROADLY. This isn't a perfect world, and we're fighting a very ruthless enemy, so sometimes tough interrogation techniques are necessary. That doesn't mean we should be beating the shit out of prisoners, because that obviously WOULD be tortured, but if I was in the administration, and you were to come to me and try and argue that something like depriving a prisoner of sleep in an interrogation (which is something police officers do, routinely, with no serious constitutional problems), I would tell you to kindly fuck off.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Torturing people is pointless anyway, because eventually it'll get to a point where they'll admit they killed JFK. Sleep deprivation and things like that which aren't going to mentally or physically damage somebody should be fine in cases of figuring out a bombing plot or what have you.