I do love America. I love the decent, moral, upright America. That is why I support interrogations that will yield intelligence needed to prevent any more atrocities committed against her by these Islamo Fascist thugs.

You say that we are declaring war against a tactic. That is only part of the answer. Behind the tactic is a real flesh and blood enemy who intends our murder. An enemy who seeks our submission. We are at war. We didn’t choose it. They did. They declared it on 9/11 if not much earlier.

Calling these prisoners “innocent people” that we want to submit to enhanced interrogation against, makes me wonder. Just whose side are you on?

Innocent? Yeah right. Are you saying the military is in the habit of capturing innocent people? That they don’t know what they are doing? Where is your proof?

Sorry, I’m not buying it.

This is a police matter? Yeah. That was Clinton’s approach and look where it got us – 9/11.

I’ve got news for you, the enemy we are facing is not a random cluster of criminals that can eventually be jailed by law enforcement. They are a highly organized, trained, mass of blood thirsty terrorists who have declared that it is their mission to eradicate us. They are a threat that law enforcement can’t possibly defeat. They are a threat that calls for eradication via military might.

Again, as Osama bin Laden has declared: Western Civilization values life, they don’t. They are not afraid to die for Allah and their stated mission is to murder us, if they have to die trying. They consider dying while trying to murder us via their “holy jihad” an honour that Allah will reward them for.

How does pampering those of them that we capture soften them up?

It doesn’t.

And as for this “torture” you keep wringing your hands over, no one is calling for it. Bush isn’t. The military isn’t. What they are calling for, is a definition of what is considered torture, so that the CIA can get about the business of saving innocent lives (the real innocents) without worry about vague policy.

If you are so concerned about torture, what about how they treat those from our side that they capture? Try mutilation and beheadings. Violent deaths at their hands. Do you seriously think that if we pamper those of them that we capture, that they are going to be so touched to abandon their mission to wipe us out?

Do you seriously think that if we pamper the prisoners we have, at the expense of being able to thwart future atrocities against the true innocents, will convince our enemies like Iran, North Korea, and China, to name a few, to honor the Geneva Convention and treat the American prisoners they capture in future battles according to those guidelines?

If you do then you’re incredibly stupid.

Like I’ve said before, get real.

Miss treating prisoners is wrong. Period. A civilized country does not torture people in its care.

I have heard the argument that we gotta not torture to keep the troops safe. Or the one about information from tortured prisoners being unreliable.

Screw that. How about not doing it because its wrong.

Western Civilization figured this out a long time ago and we should be ashamed of what our government is doing. Its time for the american public to go into full moral outrage mode and shame this administration loudly and publicly.

Spectemur agendo

Clay, didn’t we both grow up on movies about heroic American POWs insisting Nazis observe the Geneva Conventions? Didn’t Reagan condemn the USSR as an Evil Empire in part because of Lubyanka and the Gulag?

Weren’t we as Americans proud that institutionalized torture and cruelty were something we opposed, castigating North Vietnam and North Korea and Red China and Castro’s Cuba for human rights violations?

Where are those Reaganites, where are the men of the O.S.S., who parachuted into occupied France and who after WW2 fathered the CIA?

Have we become do degenerate that we’ll sacrifice decent and morality on the alter of supposed safety?

Clay, why don’t you love the America — the decent, moral, upright America — that I love?

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I keep getting the feeling that I’m living in Brazil.

The movie.
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You have bought into the fundamental idea that it’s a war. I can’t believe you fell for that framing. Trying to eradicate terrorism with soldiers is like trying to kill ants with a machine gun. It’s declaring war against a tactic.

It has to be dealt with through police and investigations, not war and occupation and torture. We are, through our actions, turning what should have been a police investigation against a few loonies into a wholesale war on Islam. We will not win that (unnecessary) war. Trying will bankrupt us.

And, in the process, we are discarding the values that we seek to protect. We are torturing innocent people. In my America you are still innocent until proven guilty. These people haven’t been convicted of a crime. Someone in the government just doesn’t like them. The problem with your position is that you think it’s okay to authorized ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ against innocent people.

If you’re Joe Iraqi on the ground, and you know that the Americans have now decided that they can officially torture you whenever they want, and you have no recourse whatsoever…. are you going to support the occupying power? And even more important, if your an average arab and you see the US doing insane things like this, are you going to think twice about supporting the terrorists side? Things like this are making it harder and harder for our potential moderate arab friends…. which by the way, are still a majority of the people in the region.

How can the Iraqis see us as anything other than a malevolent force to be despised and resisted? How can ANYONE?

You say that the terrorists who are at war with us don’t have the wherewithall to touch me and my family. Well, maybe so, maybe not yet. But, do you expect us all to wait until they do to get serious about the threat against us?

For me 9/11 was enough. I’m not like, oh well that was just NY and the Pentagon. At least they haven’t hurt me personally yet.
No. For me 9/11 was personal!

Try telling Israel that the terrorists don’t have the wherewithall to touch their families and see how far that get you. Tell that to the spaniards who lost family and loved ones in the Madrid bombing. Tell that to the people of London who likewise got introduced to personal grief ala al Qaeda terrorists. Tell that to the people who lost family members in Bali.

Get real winterbear.

We are acting rationally, and we are working with our allies. We are also acting rationally when we seek to get information out of these vermin to thwart future atrocities.

You may want to wait until they actually touch you and your family, but for me, my family, and the rest of the free peoples of the U.S. and the world are worth more than me being that foolishly selfish.

Nice try with the condescending elitist claptrap. I am not scared, nor am I brainwashed.

You on the other hand, are at the least extremely naive, or at the worst, so terrified that you hope that playing nice with our enemy will some how impress them to stop and leave us alone.

Extending unwarranted Geneva Convention rights to our enemy and trying to come up with some U.S. Constitutional Bill of Rights for them is stupid and dangerous.

That “very small group of people with very limited resources” as you are fond of refering to the Islamo Fascist terrorist managed give us a real good shiner on 9/11, convince hand wringing, appeasing liberals like you in Spain to vote for the candidate of their choice via a train bomb in Madrid, and give England a good punch in the gut with the London Train bomb. “These small group of people with very little resources nearly doubled or tripled 9/11 via 12 airliners set to explode in mid air killing thousands.

I don’t need to relax…I am fine.
You definately don’t need to relax…you’re too relaxed.

No. The terrorists have not won. But, if leftist appeasers like yourself win the day they most certainly will.

Speaking of being “brain-washed”, how does that liberal, pro-terrorist, koolaid taste?

A very small group of people with very limited resources have you so scared that you want to throw out our morality, dignity, rule of law, treaty obligations and humanity.

You have been totally brain washed by the people that have used the “war on Terror” as a political tool. You are scared to death…

Please try to relax… This too shall pass. Unless you get so worked up that you hurt yourself.

Terror is the tool of people that dont have the resources to do much of anything. This tiny group does not have the where withall to touch you and your family. This country is not going to fall into chaos unless we do it to ourselves. They are not as big a boogy man as you think they are.

Changing the definition of Torture and our obligations durring war time in order to protect this administration and its mistakes is a very dumb thing to do. It will have long term implecations that will have effect long after this current crisis has settled down.

We dont have to throw out all of the things that make the USA a great place to be. We need to act rationally and work with our allies to end this threat. Officially sanctioning torture does not make you safer, it just makes it harder for the good people in the world to support us.

“Can’t be sure these people are terrorists”

What? Are you suggesting our military is capturing the baker and the banker down the street?

Come on. The fact that officials have already indicated that the interrogations conducted on these “innocent people” have already yielded information that has prevented more carnage from them to occur indicates what type of people these prisoners are. Terrorists.

To maintain the idea that interrogating our prisoners is somehow “fomenting terrorism more than anything else” is nonsense.

Terrorism doesn’t need fomenting. It has been fomenting against us since as early as 1979. 9/11 was the day they threw down the gauntlet.

There will be no appeasing them. The terrorists have stated their mission. Death to the infidels. Convert to their brand of Islam or die!

Bin Laden himself pointed out the difference between us and them. We value life. They don’t. They are willing to die for their crusade against us.

You can’t reason with someone who doesn’t want to compromise so that they can live.

You can’t reason with an enemy whose only thing they bring to the table is their mission is to murder you.

You can worry about court trails for the enemy all you want. I worry for the freedom and lives of my fellow Americans and the rest of the free world that would be tragically lost if you had your way.

We are at war. It’s time to stop tap dancing around lofty, yet meaningless ideals and take care of the threat that promises to vanquish us.

Well, unfortunately, you cant be sure that these people are terrorists. By throwing out due process of law and then using techniques that mean that they cant bring people to trial without exposing themselves to allegations of war crimes, its hard to know if the people killed were terrorists or not.

A lot of the people that critisize our media for reporting things like illegal wire taps and torture techniques are fond of saying that exposing these crimes are helping the terrorists.

Well, I think that officially sanctioning torture, stripping detainees of their rights and holding people captive without charge is doing more to forment terrorism than anything else.

actually, scratch that…

Invading their land and killing peoples friends and families (civilians) probably is the thing that does the most to forment terrorism. But sanctioning the abuse of prisoners is on the list…

Newsweek magazine reported that a New York lawyer, Scott Horton, who …