Waterboarding

[Thorne]

I think you misunderstood this one.....no one is advocating sending tapes out to families...the point to this was to say that when they torture our soldiers, their families must live through that torture as well, because tapes are sent out to them, and it's posted on the web. We don't do that. And think about what is on THOSE tapes....electrocution, cutting, amputation, beatings, hammers used to smash limbs, torches used to burn the flesh. They are not just torturing one person, they are torturing the person's entire family. We're not talking about the store clerk here. We're talking about extremists.

Mr.FixIt said in his post, "Put it on a reality TV show--Like snowboarding, rock climbing, or tornado chasing, or whatever. I'd watch it. It would be better entertainment than "Fear Factor" or "Survivor!" While not the same as sending it to their families, how is it any different than posting it on the web?

As for your experiences with these people, I agree, that there is a serious problem here in this country with our immigration laws. We let these people send, or take the money away without penalty. Almost any other country in the world it would be against the law, resulting in long term imprisonment. That doesn't make them terrorists, any more than gay-bashers are terrorists, or anti-semites. They could be terrorists, but that has yet to be proven. Besides, when they are treated like shit just because they are Muslim, why should we expect them to treat us any better? What goes around, comes around.

Waterboarding is frightening. Sure. But we could do MUCH worse.

That would be like kicking a guy in the head to put him in a coma, then saying, "Hey, it's not that bad! I could have killed him!"
Either way, it's wrong. Especially since the majority of those people being tortured down in Cuba are not proven terrorists or sympathizers. Many of them are just ordinary people who happen to be Muslim.

If the schoolyard bully gets after you at school, and you tell on him, he's gonna beat you up...but if you knock him out, he'll leave you alone. These guys don't care if you knock them out, so long as you go down with them. Kind and gentle does no good. If it did, we would be doing that instead, since you can catch more flies with honey, and diplomacy goes a long way....except when they believe that you're the devil, and have since biblical times.

Again, that sounds all well and good, but make sure you take out the real bully, not some guy who lives in the same neighborhood. Part of the problem with dealing with terrorists as that its damned near impossible to take them out without a lot of collateral damage. It's not like being at war with a country and dropping bombs indiscriminately on the enemy cities. While they may not like us, might even hate us, most of the people in those cities hate the terrorists just as much, until we move in and start throwing our weight around, virtually forcing them to side with the terrorists.

Remember, now, I'm not saying we shouldn't interrogate the prisoners. All I'm saying is that torture has historically been shown to be the worst method for gathering intelligence. Especially in modern times, drugs and psychology can get you more reliable information, more quickly, and with less negative feedback than torture. Then, once you've gotten the information and proven that the subject was a member of a terrorist organization, go ahead and kill the bastard! Just do it humanely. Most of us wouldn't treat a rabid dog the way we treat these suspects.

And also remember, once we allow our government to virtually kidnap people off the streets and lock them away for interrogation with no evidence against them other than their race or color, we are opening the doors to having ourselves and our families treated the same way, for any reason some government agency might concoct, or for no reason at all. That way lies totalitarianism. And the end of the United States as we know them.