If Torture is Not Punished, Charles Manson Should be Freed
I'm a bit confused about this whole torture ordeal we're currently going through.
It seems as if the people who were actually doing the torturing, the foot soldiers, so to speak, will not be prosecuted at all. They get set free. Basically, they are not expected to have ever read our Constitution nor the international laws and regulations that we, in good faith, abide by. We will operate on the assumption that they couldn't have known that what they were doing was torture. I think they were also expected to be totally ignorant of history, a history that had our own country going after other countries for using similar or identical torture methods on us. These people apparently did not have the moral compass portion of their brains operational, common sense was short-circuited; they were the blind being led by the self-blindfolded.
We are also told that there are too many problems facing us and we should not focus on prosecuting anyone at all, and just let go of what has gone before. They say that if we pursue Bush and Cheney's Little Shop of Horrors, all we are doing is creating a new "witch hunt," and there is just too much going on right now for us to get bogged down by this.
Let's move forward and let go of the past, they tell us.
The only thing is....I have a feeling that there are quite a few people in our overcrowded prisons that can make that same argument. If we're going to let the aristocracy get away with breaking the laws, then let's also let Charles Manson go. And all of the Nazi war criminals. And the murderers and the rapists. The bank robbers and the wife-beaters. I mean, we're moving forward, aren't we? Leaving the past behind? Isn't it the same logic? That for reason X, we should let criminals get away with crime Y? Criminals who can justify to themselves that what they were doing was right?
And one more thing. The term "which hunt" has taken on a certain feeling of sympathy, of unjust prosecution because of the whole Salem ordeal. A fanatical society went after innocent people who were not actually "witches" (baby killing evil minions of hell, as they put it) at all. They burned the witches and marred our history books with their ashes. It's just that we now know that the "witch hunt" was unjustified; those poor women were not witches.
I don't know if the term "witch hunt" can be applied to the torturers of today. Unlike the women of Salem, these guys actually are the "witches", they did do what they are accused of. They have all admitted to it. They even swear by it.
So, if they didn't know any better, they were just following orders, or they thought they were doing the right thing, then I think overcrowding will not be a problem in our prisons anymore.
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I agree. If the Obama administration refuses to investigate and prosecute the torturers and their enablers, then it will have legalized torture by default. That will be Obama's legacy.
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This is the party that calls criminals, patriotic American heroes.
I'm ashamed of our country right now for even debating whether torture is justified or not. Torture is immoral and evil. People who commit or conspire to commit torture should be (and have been in the past) prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
p.s. The U.S. considers waterboarding a form of torture. We prosecuted it as a war crime after WW2.
This is fantastic. Of course Manson and thousands of other violent criminals should go free, if the ultimate criminals are not prosecuted. It's rather obvious Charlie would have made a great Contra or Blackwater specialist. He also had skills regarding enhaned interogation. It is incredible that we even need to have this discussion. The trials should be in progress. Rev. Bookburn - Radio Volta
Torture gets you:
1. Mixed data - some may be true, and some false. The torturee is under stress to tell you something, but not perhaps strongly inclined to tell the truth to his enemies.
2. More resistance to capture in the future. In the past, enemies surrendered to US troops easily because they knew that they would be treated well. Now, they know that they will be tortured.
3. Worse treatment for US troops captured in the future.
4. Recruiting for our enemies.
5. International condemnation.
And they have yet to come up with one undisputed intelligence breakthrough because of torture. The FBI, on the other hand, who actually know how to treat prisoners, got excellent data from some captives.
I AGREE!!!!
I agree, but there's a difference: Manson and his like are being punished (not quite tortured, but close enough) for crimes they committed, while the poor souls at Gitmo are being punished for crimes that they might conceivably commit in the future. So empty Gitmo first, then consider what to do next. Two choices: do nothing, or punish the officials and soldiers for crimes they committed on prisoners, in defiance of law, common decency and the Geneva Convention. The world is watching.
The reason you are a bit confused is that the enhanced interrogation techiniques used to keep us safe are not torture..T
Stop your use of euphemisms and double talk!! We know it when we see it. We are not so stupid as to think beatings, waterboarding, starving, body cavity probes, forced nudity and hanging by the arms are less than torture. We would not want it done to our families or ourselves. If you torture advocates had your way, these techniques would become routinely used on everyone in our domestic criminal justice system. That is the direction this will go. That is what they do in places like Iran, Pakistan, India and Korea. That is what you want, I suppose, for someone arrested for a traffic incident to be hung up and beaten bloody and then starved. That is what you want? For us to be like the benighted people of those God forsaken places....
You were asked on a previous post to provide links to your claims regarding Clinton and Carter. Could you please provide evidence to support those claims?
rwext:
Do you realize that our "enhanced interrogation techiniques," as you call them, are torture? The silence of the Clinton/Carter administrations (even if true) is your proof? Excuse me? Every modern society in the world believes it is torture, the Obama adminsitration believes it is torture, the attorney general believes it is torture, the majority of the US population believes it is torture, and last but not least, Al Qaeda believes it is torture (that is why it is such an important recruiting tool). You are such an insignificant minority, but you are scary.
"The reason you are a bit confused is that the enhanced interrogation techiniques used to keep us safe are not torture.."
Says who?
You are absolutely right, we have no need to pay any attention to the treaties which we have signed. Or the authorities charged with monitoring and enforcing those treaties which have unequivocally stated that this does constitute torture. Or historical precedent. Or the portion of the Constitution that says that those treaties have the force of law. Or the numerous legal opinions and reviews in various branches of the US military and government that have stated that this was both illegal and and ineffective.
The other guy mighta done it too, we're covered.
Long live the United States of Amerika.
Absolutely, I'm sure there are cop killers in jail who were just defending themselves. They were just sitting in the home they sold massive amounts of cocaine out of when police burst in with their weapons drawn... so they shot first and asked questions later, thinking they could disappear into the night if they just got away alive.
Well, guess what, just because you justify it to yourself doesn't make it moral (albeit morality was never Bush's strong suit, no matter what he sold America during the election). Bush/Cheney need to go to jail just like the cop killers.
[On a side note, does anyone remember when Paris Hilton did a few hours in jail and got out cause she couldn't take it? The news cycle went crazy with "Do the rich have a different justice system than the poor?" Well, no duh! A nice footnote to that came a month or so later when Scooter Libby got convicted and then let off scot-free for conspiring to put a CIA agent in harm's way.]
I believe you mean when not if.
The Salem wicthhunt and the Inquisition was caused by the mini ice age. The mini ice age was a slight drop in temperature that led to crop failures, plague etc. Things really sucked and so people do what they always do : look for sone one to blame. Unfortunately history has not been revised except on the history channel and few people know this. I guess a few degree temperature change leading to absolute catastrophe is not relevant in today's rock solid climate environment. As far as Dick and George go can anyone doubt they are utter sadists. How else can you explain it. All the experts say it does not work. Still they waterboarded that guy 189 times. Talk about trying to get blood out of a turnip. Sadism. It's the new 40.
Actually, the Little Ice Age's most devastating effects came in the early 1300s, with several harsh winters and summers that were too short and cold to produce sufficient crops.
By the 1600s, farmers had of course adapted crops to the cooler climate. However, there were a couple of poor growing seasons which included the right conditions for ergot in the rye crops, plus a considerable number of refugees and widows from the Thirty Years War, and still a great deal of religious strife between Protestants and Catholics.
Many of the accused were women who had no families to support them. A number of others were women who had both property and greedy in-laws.
The torturers who forced confessions from the "witches" learned their techniques from the Inquisition. Many witch hunters refused to accept that the accused might be innocent, so they simply kept torturing people till they confessed and then tortured them more to implicate others.
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