Most real Americans just don't swallow that.Rockslinger said:
We say that is the way the enemy thinks....sorry.
Torture used by USA to falsify intelligence
- Thread starter Questor
- Start date
We say that is the way the enemy thinks....sorry.
That's not the case here. Try again.Rockslinger said:
People have been tortured here for SHORT-TERM reasons, not for reasons of survival. They have been tortured to avoid individual terrorist attacks, not to prevent things that threaten our survival.
I doubt that it's been successful even at that, but for the sake of argument, let's say that torture prevented some attack that would have killed a few hundred or a thousand people, something like another 9/11.
That is short-term, and unrelated to our survival.
The more important question is the long-term question, the one related to our survival: How do we stop these attacks overall, rather than individually? How do we get back to a world in which we are not under this constant threat?
The answer is we need to reach a political understanding with the average person in the Middle East, we need that average person to be generally on our side, and generally against the terrorists.
Torturing people is counter-productive towards the long-term goal and as a result is itself a threat to our survival.
Yup, that is the end game. How do we get there from here? In the meantime, we should just suck it up take the hits?fuji said:
Except that torture in this case was used to obtain knowingly false information to support an illegal invasion of Iraq. Torture was not used to prevent a terrorist attack on the US. That is what the article pointed out. Any information obtained from the use of torture would not be useful in preventing a terrorist attack as it would be completely unreliable. Torture, in the case of the US, was used to force members of Al Qaeda to tell lies. A person being tortured will tell you anything you want him to tell you and it will not coincide with the truth. In fact that was the whole point of the article.fuji said:
From the Senate Armed Services Committee Report on Detainees:
The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: "A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful." As higher-ups got more "frustrated" at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, "there was more and more pressure to resort to measures" that might produce that intelligence.
Accordintg to committee chairman, Carl Levin the report received unanimous support from its members - John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included. Levin also emphasized the report's accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine - only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was "driven," Levin said. By what? "They'd say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda
and Iraq."
The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: "A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful." As higher-ups got more "frustrated" at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, "there was more and more pressure to resort to measures" that might produce that intelligence.
Accordintg to committee chairman, Carl Levin the report received unanimous support from its members - John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included. Levin also emphasized the report's accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine - only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was "driven," Levin said. By what? "They'd say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda
and Iraq."
LOL Is that the best you can do?binderman said:
(Hey Fuji, don't take this personally.) The AQ recruiting literature and videos view "honourable and moral" as weakness. They consider all Western nations (except Russia nad Easten Europe) as "wimps" that deserve to be attacked and killed.fuji said:
That's because they can see that people like you are so scared shitless of their next attack that you will do anything, ANYTHING, to try and stop it. That's what they think is weak. I don't think you can successfully quote any AQ material that specifically says that the West is honourable and moral and therefore weak. I think what you will find is that they think the West is entirely corrupt and immoral, and that they point to things like Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and waterboarding as proof.Rockslinger said:
What AQ thinks doesn't matter though. What matters is how all that goes over with the average Muslim--and right now the AQ line is somewhat believable, because Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and wateboarding are true. A credible case CAN be made that AQ is right in this respect, that it's all true: the West has losts its moral groundings and has become entirely corrupt and immoral--after all, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and waterboarding ARE true.
We need to correct that.
I respectfully disgree. "They" think the West is corrupt and immoral because they consider us to be "non-believers" worthy of death by beheading. They point to things like our women showing their faces, eating pork, drinking alcohol, tolerating homos, etc. as proof.fuji said:
(Hey Fuji, I don't always agree with you but you do present your views (right or wrong) in a calm rational manner.)
Again it comes back to what the average Muslim believes. Only the extremists go in for this "behead all the non-believers" stuff, the question is will they be tolerated by the rest of Muslim society?
The blame has to go two ways here. The rest of Muslim society has to answer for why they DO tolerate these fuckheads, and they do--these guys operate with relative impunity, people don't ask questions, don't condemn them, don't confront them. That enables them to operate.
On the other hand, pragmatically speaking, we aren't going to change the average Muslim mind just by saying "no fair" we have to come up with a compelling vision of the West the displace the one that currently exists in the Middle East.
We just are NOT going to get there by way of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, or a water board. It isn't going to happen--so long as we do those things the story that we are corrupt and immoral sells papers in Cairo and Riyadh, not to mention London and New York.
The blame has to go two ways here. The rest of Muslim society has to answer for why they DO tolerate these fuckheads, and they do--these guys operate with relative impunity, people don't ask questions, don't condemn them, don't confront them. That enables them to operate.
On the other hand, pragmatically speaking, we aren't going to change the average Muslim mind just by saying "no fair" we have to come up with a compelling vision of the West the displace the one that currently exists in the Middle East.
We just are NOT going to get there by way of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, or a water board. It isn't going to happen--so long as we do those things the story that we are corrupt and immoral sells papers in Cairo and Riyadh, not to mention London and New York.
It seems there are 3 basic layers of Muslim society.fuji said:
1) The extremists such as the AQ leadership.
2) The "average" middle class,
3) The lower class.
The vast majority of AQ and Taliban recruits (the foot soldiers) come from the lower, dare I say uneducated, class. That guy in the Mumbai attack didn't even know who President Bush is. Plus, 99% of what the AQ recruiters tell their recruits are lies anyway. For example: "You must go fight in Afghanistan because White men are raping Muslim women". The recruits believe this shit because they are uneducated, barely literate lower class peasants from the hills.
All 19 september 11th hijackers were college educated. A few had PHD`s. Also if you believe in opinion polling support for suicide bombing in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia is higher among wealthier more educated people, although that may be because they think someone else will do it for them.Rockslinger said:
This is about more then poverty, it`s about those who feel they can impose their beliefs on others and those that believe in freedom. It`s the religous who feel everyone must agree against those who believe in diversity of thought.
The 9/11 hijackers had to be fairly sophisticated to be able to fly an airplane and locate the target. They also had to be able to speak English to operate inside the U.S.gramage said:
The common day suicide bomber or cannon fodder in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Pakistan is fairly uneducated, barely literate and can't find NYC on a map. Also, they actually believe that White men in Iraq and Afghanistan are raping Muslim women and burying their daughters alive.
Many suicide bombers in Gaza are blowing themselves up strictly for the money that goes to their families. Guess who is providing the money to their families?
The profile could be ANYONE male or female who lost a loved one over there and just wants revenge against the ones they know who killed their loved one.Rockslinger said:
Education has nothing to do with wanting revenge...
