"“The handling of detainee issues is going to be a huge, huge issue in the period ahead,” said Marc A. Thiessen, a former speechwriter for Mr. Bush.
“For six years,” Mr. Thiessen added, “the left has had a field day with this, running around saying we tortured people and comparing us to the Spanish Inquisition.” Now, he said, the politics have turned. “It’s a huge vulnerability for Obama and the Democrats, and Republicans are starting to gather their courage and talking about this.”"
Yglesias thinks that if Thiessen doesn't want to be compared to the Spanish Inquisition, he should stop championing torture techniques from there
US soldiers taken captive by Chinese forces during the Korean War were often tortured in order to induce false confessions of war crimes and such. Consequently, the American military compiled a manual that detailed the kind of torture techniques the Chinese used and offered training in torture-resistance. The Bush administration decided to turn that around and start applying many of the same methods to terrorism suspects. As a result of convergent evolution of torture practices, it seems that various figures interested in coerced confessions—Spanish Inquisitors, People’s Liberation Army, Khmer Rouge, etc.—all hit upon the basic idea behind waterboarding.The blatant immorality of these people sickens me. As a person who remembers the Cold War and remembers the fear of the Soviets, I am more than a little stunned that so many conservatives and conservative Christians now embrace the very tactics of the former USSR.
Exactly why the Bush administration thought that an interrogation technique designed to compel people to “admit” to whatever the interrogator wants to hear would be a good idea has to remain something of a matter of speculation.
The next conservative who lectures me on morality may get an earful.
14 comments:
Are you pro-choice on abortion?
Wow, looks like a cagey argument I have never seen before. That those of us who favor a woman's right to choose are inconsistent criticizing a state sponsored action to deliberately torture.
Heard it. It isn't convincing. You will need to do better.
Hypocritical is a good way to describe it. If you object to torturing an adult, why then approve of the torture AND murder of children?
Not realizing, of course, that you are in the same pickle. We are evil and immoral liberals, but you are some kind of moral conservative. And you endorse the policies of the Inquisition and the Soviet KGB (for false confessions).
Well argued, there, John. Well done. You just took the side of Pol Pot but patted yourself on the back and decided that someone who supports abortion rights is hypocritical.
Impressive.
You are a hypocrite. And I never said I was for torturing anyone; you assumed I was.
When you oppose torturing children(millions, compared to the few adults in question) with the same vigor that you oppose torturing adults, you might have some credibility. But not until then.
Well, actually, John, you don't know shit about me. You have no idea about my views on abortion.
So maybe you should take your smug self and go visit another blog.
Strange beliefs that prohibit torturing, but not killing adults who either have committed a crime, or who are at least suspected of it, but grant women and abortion providers the "right" to torture and murder innocent children. What kind of moral contortions must be required to hold those beliefs?
I don't quite know why I respond to a troll, but here goes.
I have no idea why you endorse killing an adult who may not have committed a crime. I understand the death penalty for the truly guilty (though I still don't agree with it as policy) but your qualifier suggests that you don't really care about innocence as long as someone thinks they are guilty.
And your conflation of abortion and torture is certainly not new, but it is still problematic. First, one thing does not relate directly to the other. You could disagree with me on abortion (as many do) and agree with me on torture. You are making this connection--they are not inherently connected.
Second, you are mischaracterizing abortion, or certainly how some of us who are pro-choice see it. Few of us like abortion, but we are unsure that the state should be the one to decide that a woman be forced to carry a child of rape, or incest, or even a child that has developed without a brain to term. She may well choose to do any of those, but we are unsure that the state should have the right to reach into that consultation between a doctor and a woman and tell her that her options are to carry the child to term or go to jail. If that is what you want, fine, but the rest of us would prefer to try to reduce unwanted pregnancies and reduce abortions. We can agree on that.
Finally, you seem to gloss over a key point here. The state is not forcing any one to get an abortion. That would be horrific. The state is not telling women they should. The state is, under Roe, telling women they have to make that determination with some limitations (can't do a late term abortion just because you have changed your mind, for example). The state, in the case of torture, has taken people merely suspected of being bad, and is applying a cruel and historically immoral tactic that will not produce good intelligence. It is hard to see any good there.
I think you misunderstood, so let me rephrase part of my last post.
Strange beliefs that prohibit torturing, without killing, adults...
I don't endorse killing an adult who may not have committed a crime.
I don't agree that I have mischaracterized how you see abortion. You wish to allow women the freedom to torture and murder their unborn children. If you don't want to legally prohibit abortion, then you want to allow it. There isn't a third option.
You don't see the hypocrisy in prohibiting(legally) the torture, without the killing, of adults, but allowing(legally) both the torture and the murder of children?
If that is the way you characterize abortion, then we have nothing really to talk about. Under your characterization, btw, everyone of those women who abort should be imprisoned for life or executed. I suspect you will find that a difficult political argument to make.
Yeah, I guess it would be a difficult political argument. Sadly, justice is hard to come by these days in America. Thankfully, there is a God who will someday administer justice perfectly.
Well, it is always nice when your God agrees with your bloodthirsty approach. You really want all those women in jail.
go away.
No, God doesn't agree with me, I agree with Him. I didn't write the Bible; and I won't pretend it doesn't say what it does.
Yeah, I am sure you do. But it is still nice when God hates the same people you do.
Be gone. Go bug some other heretic.
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