Torture

[S][N]

I need not write anymore. Justin and Dusk have dug a grave deeper than I could ever do for them with my own points.

Although one thing threw me off about you Dusk, your listed as a Roman Catholic on your profile, yet you say:
- "First off I'm not an xtian, christian or catholic, I follow the way of life without belief."

Umm..what the hell?

[Justin86]

You did nothing but dodge questions. You still have plenty to write.

[Autumn Dusk]

[quote]- "First off I'm not an xtian, christian or catholic, I follow the way of life without belief."

Umm..what the hell?[/quote]

I follow the catholic moral standards. I do what they ask of me in action though not belief. I confess once a year. I do not recieve communion.
The profile asked for my religion, not my Faith. I do not have faith. I follow the Roman Catholic religion. When Rome takes a side I will follow them wheither I personally agree or not. I'm impartial to hell, I've already had a test run, didn't care for it, but I'm here now so I don't see how an eternity of that could be any worse than it was beucase at the time I didn't know it wasn't eternity.

And I haven't dug a deeper hole than anyone. I don't think torturing for the sake of s*ts and giggles is appropriate. I'm all too familiar with that in just about all ways that it can be done with as little equitment as possible. However, torture, to some extent to save lives, nary, souls can be appropriate. It isn't ends vs means and I'm not saying we go and carve people's flesh like Jack the ripper, but if you water torture, potty deprive, sleep deprive, give truth serium to a criminal to save lives, which may save the criminal's own soul in the end, its not wrong. Truth must prevail, truth will prevail and its comming out somehow, a little coaxing won't be all that horrible as the means.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' post='1411032' date='Oct 29 2007, 07:57 AM']No. They are not. End of Story. Semantics is exactly what I oppose. Tossing around the label of torture to describe any discomfort whatsoever is semantics.

If you have spent enough time in the military, you know what torture is. I am referring to SERE training, btw. Talk to one of your SAS blokes...they know what torture is. Talk to a Holocaust survivor, talk to a guest of the Hanoi Hilton. Talk to someone at a Streisand concert. What I listed is not torture. Uncomfortable, disorienting, scary, painful to a degree....but not torture. I imagine you would also consider pointing an empty gun at a terrorist, pulling the trigger and yelling BANG! as torture because it frightens them.

If loud music is torture, then I want the Amnesty International pinkos to go after all the kids in thump-thump cars and my neighbor on the next street. If running water over one's face is torture, then every parent who bathed a wiggling baby and splashed the kiddo in the eyes needs to be arrested. If withholding potty privileges is torture, then my elementary school teachers have some 'splainin' to do.

All I ask is to quit labeling everything as 'torture' based on what the Godless leftist media shovels at you. I do NOT condone torture at all. Not one bit. But let us first be very clear about what is and is not torture.[/quote]
[url="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/torture"]Torture[/url]

[i]1. [b]the act of inflicting excruciating pain[/b], as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.[/i]

I don't see how waterboarding, sleep deprivation, extremes of heat or cold, etc., don't fit into the above definition of torture. With respect, I submit that your ideological position has caused you to perform linguistic gymnastics with regard to these practices. There's no way you can honestly square that circle.

From my perspective, the Golden Rule should be applied: if you wouldn't want something done to you, if you wouldn't want something done to our service personnel, don't do it to others and then claim it's not "torture." Quite frankly, you're playing into the hands of the bad guys in more ways than one.

[MIKolbe]

CCC
2313 Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.



Why not go HERE ^ and expand upon THIS, when dealing with prisoners, instead of semantically cajolling how far we can go in [s]toturing[/s] facilitating the extraction of intel without crossing the line into torture???

[S][N]

[quote name='Autumn Dusk' post='1411088' date='Oct 29 2007, 12:07 PM']I follow the catholic moral standards. I do what they ask of me in action though not belief. I confess once a year. I do not recieve communion.
The profile asked for my religion, not my Faith. I do not have faith. I follow the Roman Catholic religion. When Rome takes a side I will follow them wheither I personally agree or not. I'm impartial to hell, I've already had a test run, didn't care for it, but I'm here now so I don't see how an eternity of that could be any worse than it was beucase at the time I didn't know it wasn't eternity.

And I haven't dug a deeper hole than anyone. I don't think torturing for the sake of s*ts and giggles is appropriate. I'm all too familiar with that in just about all ways that it can be done with as little equitment as possible. However, torture, to some extent to save lives, nary, souls can be appropriate. It isn't ends vs means and I'm not saying we go and carve people's flesh like Jack the ripper, but if you water torture, potty deprive, sleep deprive, give truth serium to a criminal to save lives, which may save the criminal's own soul in the end, its not wrong. Truth must prevail, truth will prevail and its comming out somehow, a little coaxing won't be all that horrible as the means.[/quote]

..Dude your as catholic as a muslim imo.

"I follow the catholic moral standards. I do what they ask of me in action though not belief."

But not the one's pertaining to war and torture.

Again supermarket catholicism.

[Autumn Dusk]

[quote name='S][N' post='1411176' date='Oct 29 2007, 06:18 PM']
..Dude your as catholic as a muslim imo.[/quote]

wow, thats great coming from an athiest

[quote]"I follow the catholic moral standards. I do what they ask of me in action though not belief."

But not the one's pertaining to war and torture.[/quote]

actually, what is and isn't allowed is being debated.

Edited October 29, 2007 by Autumn Dusk

[Groo the Wanderer]

[quote name='kenrockthefirst' post='1411130' date='Oct 29 2007, 03:20 PM'][url="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/torture"]Torture[/url]

[i]1. [b]the act of inflicting [i]excruciating[/i] pain[/b], as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.[/i]

I don't see how waterboarding, sleep deprivation, extremes of heat or cold, etc., don't fit into the above definition of torture.[/quote]

Now define for me excruciating....


You ever been waterboarded? I have. It's terrifying. I lasted about 20 seconds before I broke down. Did it hurt? Not a bit.

We need to remember that words have meanings. Precise meanings. Throwing them around for shock value is of no worth.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' post='1411184' date='Oct 29 2007, 04:47 PM']Now define for me excruciating....
You ever been waterboarded? I have. It's terrifying. I lasted about 20 seconds before I broke down. Did it hurt? Not a bit.

We need to remember that words have meanings. Precise meanings. Throwing them around for shock value is of no worth.[/quote]
Yes, yes, "words mean things." I've listened to Rush Limbaugh as well.

Again, with respect, I submit that you're performing linguistic gymnastics in order to justify something to yourself based on an ideological [i]political[/i] position that is at variance with Catholic teaching.

[dairygirl4u2c]

[quote]The ends do not justify the means. Period.[/quote]

so you can kill given a just war, but you cannot torture giving a just war. and the killing isn't an evil means, but torture is. interesting...
not sure how you come to that conclusion. seems more like you're simply apply a simple rule of thumb mindlesslessly and coming to unrealistic results. but, i am open to an explanation.

i'm sure i could come up with a principle of double effects rationalization that catholics are so keen on too, as their exception to the end justifies the means. or frame it as the lesser of several evils, as an accetable means even if normally evil.

[S][N]

Killing and torturing are different. I mean really, do I have to state the difference?

I like this thread. Now we can see the real catholics from the supermarket catholics.

[dairygirl4u2c]

i know how they are different. you don't have to state that.

you have to state how they are effectively different such that you can kill but not torture.

but even if you did that, it'll be a difference of opinion as to whether they are effectively different.

for one, most people who are killed in a just war, are not any more of an immediate threat in some far off foregin land, than a terrorist is who has knowledge of a bomb in NY. in fact, the terroist is more of a threat, with his knowledge.

[dairygirl4u2c]

here is A. A is in China, intent on killing americans but cannot get here. he will someday, presumably. We are in a just war with China. The USA kills A, and some catholics say that's okay.

here is B. B planted a bomb in NY. he knows where it is. we are in just war with his country. we can kill B, to prevent more bombs, and presumably threaten him with death to get the location of the bomb, but we cannot torture B to get the location of the bomb.

is threatening with death acceptable to the end's don't justify the means crowd? it's not preventing a future bomb placement.
is threatening to torture but not torture okay?
is killing him okay just for placing the bomb even if we don't suspect he'll do it again?

it seems way too simple minded to find a few situations where intuitively to most people the end doesn't justify the means, and tehn try to apply that to all situations as if the rule is hard and fast.

Edited October 30, 2007 by dairygirl4u2c

[Jesus_lol]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1411489' date='Oct 30 2007, 08:49 AM']i know how they are different. you don't have to state that.

you have to state how they are effectively different such that you can kill but not torture.

but even if you did that, it'll be a difference of opinion as to whether they are effectively different.

for one, most people who are killed in a just war, are not any more of an immediate threat in some far off foregin land, than a terrorist is who has knowledge of a bomb in NY. in fact, the terroist is more of a threat, with his knowledge.[/quote]


Yes, you may know the difference between being killed and tortured but I dont think you understand it very well. In wars, justifiable or not, people get killed. That means living one moment, dead the next. When people get tortured, in war time or not, there is hours, days or weeks of excruciating pain to go through first. At the end of all that, they are either killed because they have no more "worth" to the torturer or they are left crippled, physically and mentally.
They are not even remotely the same thing.

Edited October 30, 2007 by Jesus_lol

[S][N]

How do you define torture?...There's already been a tonne of statements on it.

Now how do we KNOW it's torture? We can't! We all have a pain limit, some people can take a beating, literally have broken rips, internal bleeding and they'd say, "That's all you got". Other's wouldn't last 10 seconds of waterboarding.

What you people are trying to do is create one ideal of a pain barrier for all, and instead of thinking about the individual's own limits, you stick a banner on them all as if they could take a beating and nothing would be wrong with it.

It's bloody disgusting. And the clincher to this, the people that say or voted that they have no problem with torture, COULD NEVER DO IT themselves. EVER! But then...it's easy to support something we'd never have to do, and others would do for us.

Your hypocrites and savages. Simple as that. Your no better than the criminal gangs that kidnap kids, fathers, mothers and inflict pain on them for a ransom, before killing them.

And this quote I just found while reading up on torture techniques:

- In 1958, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that "torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers."

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture#Torture_methods_and_devices"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture#Tortu...ods_and_devices[/url]