Here’s O’Reilly trying to get military experts to agree with him.
Here are two from Shepard Smith who is violently opposed.
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#9 – You want to know who watches FOX? Just look at the ratings for Fox, CNN and MSNBC and you will gain some insight.
Rittgers did have a point, but the O’Reilly factor is certainly not an ideal venue to articulate it.
Bill O’s point was “Cheney says he’s got proof that the torture provide valuable evidence. If it saved American lives, then is it worth it?”
Well the first problem with that is Bill O is implying Cheney is telling the truth. Lets not forget Cheney has said we don’t torture years ago, and also said Iraq had WMDs.
The problem with Bill O’s point about saving American lives and what Rittgres tried to counter was: There is no way to prove that other ways of interrogation couldn’t have provided the same results of saving American lives. He also had a good point of: If you’re going to declassify the information that was received via torture, then you need to declassify all of the BAD information that was given as well.
The other guest even agreed with the point that torture has to be very specific otherwise it’s useless. And there is plenty of information being released that lends one to see how our “enhanced interrogation” falls into that category.
Also what’s not getting mentioned much is all of the ‘enhanced interrogation’ that was being used on completely innocent people. It’s a little easier to accept “waterboarding” on a known terrorist, but lets not forget there were many people who had their head slammed against a flexible wall for just looking suspicious.
#31 ToxicAsshole – Yes, everyone is watching, so should you. baa, baa…
#30–Fusion==you are rambling a bit, but I will take this as your point of the moment: “This should be a bright line though.” /// I agree. Being Bright doesn’t mean that we will agree with one another, and just because we might disagree, that doesn’t mean the line is obscure or that anyone has waffled.
“If a San Bernardino cop water boarded a prisoner in order to find out where the others were holed up happened, would that be justifiable?” /// Of course it “can be.” Just because “usually” it is not should not control the situation. How about “Dirty Harry?” The creep has a school bus of kiddies buried underground ready to suffocate if he isn’t paid big bucks. Two of your very own kiddies are on the bus. You have 6 hours. Do you want to talk to the perp or let Dirty Harry step on his gunshot wound? Remember that every human being is somebodies kiddie.
Now, in your hypo, you got one criminal and you are after his gang who are holed up. Seems to me whether or not torture is reasonable would be what the holed up gang is reasonably thought to be planning and capable of doing?
Can you imagine ANY POSSIBLE CASE where torture is warranted, or is it an absolute bar? One innocent victim, a bus of kiddies, a building of office workers, the EAST coast==no limits at all?
What is your “moral” position?
People voicing opinions on subjects where they have no idea what hell they are talking about.
If ever in the position of needing information from an enemy, you shoot the bastard in the knee caps and upper thigh. Next grind your heel in his nuts.
After that you have all the information he is going to give you so you humanely put one in his head to ease his pain and get rid of anyone who might later bitch.
If you piss ass bunch of wimps and your heroes at FOX, were ever in a situation other than plopping your lard asses behind a computer all day theorizing about whats right for the rest of the world, then you might understand war and violence.
#35 – Did you order the code red? I can handle the truth.
#35–qsabe==too heavy handed. What we should do is create these specialty camps that “look like” the world five years later. Then we drug the captive and take him there. When he wakes up, we tell him his dastardly plan worked and the world is now all muslim. Al Jazeera wants to interview him about his success and he needs to practice his story with the helpful aides.
Only if he figures out he is being tricked to we shoot him and grind his nuts.
I mean, lets be practical.
Let’s make ’em watch O’Really. That’ll do it.
i’m so glad the bush ppl did what they did… at least they got something right. had the clinton ppl done the same to the bastards that tried to blow up the world trade center the first time and then ran around blowing up embassies and attacking the uss cole, i GUARANTY you 9/11 never would have happened. who do you want the walking the watch that protects this county… the whinny negative nobos that bitch about everything the u.s. does regardless of what it does or the united states marine corps? whatever they did to those tweeks at gitmo it wasn’t nearly enough. we might be a maggot infested dying old carcass of a country that deserves all it gets… but for once deserving a-holes that kill innocent ppl got that they deserved.
Watching O’Reilly is torture!
O’Reilly insist lives were saved maybe so. I’d then like to know if any innocent lives were lost because of false information given by the people who were tortured? It sure has happened before. When we are scared we jump even if the intelligence has a good chance of being false.
Remember we took on all of Iraq and that idea was sold to us on badly interpreted intelligence. Civilian deaths in Iraq from violence because of are medaling is now close to 100,000.
So lets say from information gained from torturing a prisoner saved 50 American lives, a guy in New York with a bus bomb was stopped, however 100 innocent Pakistanis were killed because the same prisoner also gave us false information about the location of a terrorist training camp and we dropped a Daisy Cutter on it. Was it worth it? Are innocent Americans worth 2to1 over innocent Pakistanis? The information is unreliable and if Cheney gets his documents released lets be sure to release all the false information that was also given and acted on. If any innocents were killed should we hold Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Gonzales ect. on trail.
Cheney is just hoping to keep his own ass out of jail.
torture is wrong ant it was well defined by WWII
#34: “Can you imagine ANY POSSIBLE CASE where torture is warranted, or is it an absolute bar? One innocent victim, a bus of kiddies, a building of office workers, the EAST coast==no limits at all?”
Yes, I can imagine a “possible” case where I would advocate torture of a suspect.
I only have three problems with torture debate:
1. TV shows e.g. “24” & movies e.g.”Dirty Harry” go to great lengths to show us why we should have no pity for the dirtbag e.g. he has “a bus of kiddies” in danger.
We are expected to believe that -anyone- the US has tortured, or will torture, is harboring information that could save American lives.
In a nutshell, I can imagine a scenario in which I feel torture would be justified, but I am not convinced that -all- the people we tortured actually held any information that would justify the torture we inflicted on them.
2. The nut-jobs who are desperately trying to protect Bush’s public, official assertion that the US doesn’t torture.
At first they went all PC on us, saying that it was “harsh interrogation techniques” – not torture.
When that fails, they then come to the defense of torture – because torturing an enemy of America is okay as long as it saves American lives.
And, now I’m supposed to believe Cheney when he says American lives were saved… when he was also leading the chorus that “the worst of the worst” were in Gitmo – when the worst were actually in the secret, “black” interrogation sites – and not brought to Gitmo until the public was made aware of the existence of the “black” sites.
3. This crap about how we “waterboard our own troops for training, so it can’t be considered torture”
If people can’t understand the difference between waterboarding our own troops – in controlled circumstances – versus being waterboarded while imprisoned by an enemy… then those people are clueless f*%ks.
Are our own troops kept awake for 11-days at a time?
“Slapped” on the abdomen – i.e. “Whee, its just a pink belly like you got at summer camp!”
Slammed into walls – as long as a rolled-up towel is used to prevent neck injuries?
Our troops -know- they are in a training exercise, and even if they are accidentally injured, they know they will be given immediate medical attention.
The people who we have tortured know they may be treated for their injuries, but only so that the “interrogation” can continue.
Think about that, for a bit, and then tell me waterboarding is the same thing we do to our troops – for “training”.
For all of you that do support waterboarding.
Let’s say that Serbian forces in 1999 Kosovo war waterboarded American POW, put fecies on them, electrodes on their genitales…
Would you trial those people?
War is an ugly part of life many judge through the spectrum of ignorance. They cry injustice from the safety of distance making irrational and emotional claims built upon a false structure of caring.
Many fool themselves by demanding we fight a civilized war, then when the next round of death and destruction rains down these same people are always the first to whine. “Why wasn’t anything done to stop this?” They conveniently forget their sorted part in crushing national vigilance after the fact.
So, as you stand knee deep in blood and charred body parts of your friends and family remember what your have asked for and received… a civilized destruction you can feel good about because you cared more about the enemy than your fellow citizens.
There is no “moral hazard” defense here. Waterboarding is torture, there are no “grey areas”.
For those that keep insisting that there is a difference, you are opening ALL of our troops and people outside our borders to being tortured, including YOU. Do YOU want to undergo waterboarding just for visiting a country that doesn’t like us?
Stop this bullcrap. It is torture, there are no alternative definitions, you are wrong.
Now for the extra points==after defining torture and the VERY LIMITED circumstances where it even “might be” warranted, THEN we get to decide whether or not the benefits of torture are outweighed by other policy considerations.
Those of you with concrete certainty between your ears need not engage in this ultimate determination. You just don’t have the horsepower.
Off topic==but sure does remind me of our moral position on paying ransom for terrorist captives: “USA NEVER pays ransom.” But you’d have to think Raygun had a sense of humor to appreciate the values in contest on that one.
I don’t know why Bill keeps saying detainees are waterboarded for “a few seconds”. The military memos revealed that the detainees were waterboarded for *hours* at a time.
This video is all you need to know about the ridiculous idea that Fox “news” is about “finding out information”. Bill already knows the answers he’s looking for each and every time he “investigates” a matter or “interviews” an expert.
Seriously — is there anything *stupider* than a Fox news fan?
“So, as you stand knee deep in blood and charred body parts of your friends and family remember what your have asked for and received… a civilized destruction you can feel good about because you cared more about the enemy than your fellow citizens.”
This has been the justification of every totalitarian regime in history, bar none.
#47–wretched==its also the fact of the matter for every conquered nation==or they were simply out manned, out manuevered, or done in by better technology.
If a country has “every advantage” but still fails, what do you think they did wrong?
Shep is the only normal guy over at FOX TV.
my 2¢
who cares about O’Reilly ? he’s just another MSM
mouthpiece.
—
given the recent DHS Righting Extremist document
that was leaked out, i think the real debate should
be whether torture will be used on us, the American citizen in the near future.
that DHS document basically makes everyone in this
thread, as well as almost all Americans a possible terrorist threat. -not to mention just about anyone who passionately debates politics.
couple that with the gutting of rights via the patriot act, john warner defense act and the military commissions act of 2006 to name a few,
there is almost nothing to stop the creative use of torture (pardon, i mean harsh interrogation) on US Citizens..
-yes, some protections have been restored as of late,
but all it will take is deceleration of a national emergency for whatever reason and the draconian dictatorial-power executive orders that many
thought the bush/necon administration was setting itself up for, will come into play under the current administration.
since the obama administration has turned out to be the bush administration on steroids, whats to stop them from needing to use “harsh interrogation tactics” on US Citizens in the name of national security?
they obviously know something is planned
domestically. why else would they intend to
have 20,000+ active troops on US soil by 2011
and thousands of caskets being stored all over
the country? -for a sudden influx of infected
immigrants? -please.
one had better hope the outcome of all these
debates results in the unequivocal outlaw of
torture in any form. for whatever reason this
buildup on US soil is, you can bet they’ll be
wanting to get intell from some unwilling
citizen to stop any further “domestic terror”
(not to mention all the trial ballons
being floated in the MSM recently
about security breaches on US infrastructure
and DoD entities. -information like this
does not see the light of day unless by
design as a precursor to impending political
or military action)
-as usual, i think all this talk is just a
distraction to keep us looking under the
wrong rocks.
-s
Blah, blah, blah.
Bottom line.
Waterboarding was not classified as torture in 2002. There is no case here.
#13 Fair enough. Yes, it is a term that has a definition. I wasn’t clear in what I meant. What I meant was that those who debate the issue never define the term.
#52, Benson
Waterboarding was not classified as torture in 2002. There is no case here.
There have been several court cases, civilian and military, where water boarding was defined as torture. The last in 1994 where a Texas Sherrif received 10 years in jail. And no, George Bush didn’t give the guy a Governor’s Pardon either.
The biggest fact is that all involved with the investigation and those people defending its methods are ascribe to the ideal:
The End Justifies The Means
When we believe that. When we practice that. When we make it the banner that we bear.
We become evil. As that is the sign of true evil.
The end cannot justify the means. We are not animals. We walk on TWO legs, not four.
Cursor_
#54–cursor==”The end cannot justify the means. We are not animals. We walk on TWO legs, not four.”
EVERY end has a means. EVERY means has an end. Some ends/means are justified and some are not.
We ARE animals. With a brain. Use it.
#43 – Many speak in such ways as if they’re the only ones who have seen destruction and death and therefore anyone who doesn’t share their same perspective must be ignorant and haven’t experienced the same.
They live on a false sense that they are more wise than others, when in most cases they are just as ignorant.
Hey, I thought Fox News was a monolithic neo-con network? How could they have two views if ‘fair and balanced’ is a joke?
I think the two views applies to liberals: If Bush does it, it’s bad, if a Democrat does it, it’s OK.
Or in Nancy Pelosi’s case, if there’s no cameras it’s ok. If there’s an audience to demagogue, it’s bad.
#56 BrimstoneAshe
>>They live on a false sense that they are more wise than others, when in most cases they are just as ignorant.
Not sure what your point is other than you are offended or maybe even insulted that someone would dare point out that we are giving the enemy every advantage for victory by setting policies that insure our defeat.
Would it hurt to use a little common sense and maintain a some vigilance especially since we know death is at the doorstep just waiting for Obama to be foolish enough to open the door?
If you are offended by wisdom then maybe you should ask yourself – why?
#55, Bpbbp,
EVERY end has a means. EVERY means has an end. Some ends/means are justified and some are not.
Not all Means are good. Nor are the Ends all good. BUT, when you can justify the evil means because of some beneficial end, you are still evil.
We executed Germans after Nuremburg for torturing prisoners. This really puts our political prestige in a less than favorable light.