Should we torture Bin Laden?

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 4:00 pm

Let's say that we capture Bin Laden, or Al-Zawahiri (sp) alive......should we torture them to get vital info and save lives?

Certainly these two know dozens, perhaps even hundreds or thousands of terrorists and have "first hand" knowledge of innumerable terrorist actions plans.

So, assuming they are uncooperative and not forthcoming, should we torture them to obtain info that would certainly save innocent lives? Or should we give them three squares a day and a nice warm cell and hope that they "change their stripes" and realize what great people the Americans really are, and renounce their terrorist ways?

I would emphatically state "YES". (to torturing these two).

Marco

PS: Bush should veto the McCain Amendment....it's worthless...all show and no go.

Flying Lobster · Post by **Flying Lobster** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:29 pm

Marco Zee wrote:Let's say that we capture Bin Laden, or Al-Zawahiri (sp) alive......should we torture them to get vital info and save lives?

Certainly these two know dozens, perhaps even hundreds or thousands of terrorists and have "first hand" knowledge of innumerable terrorist actions plans.

So, assuming they are uncooperative and not forthcoming, should we torture them to obtain info that would certainly save innocent lives? Or should we give them three squares a day and a nice warm cell and hope that they "change their stripes" and realize what great people the Americans really are, and renounce their terrorist ways?

I would emphatically state "YES". (to torturing these two).

All this tough guy talk kind of excites me!

marcokinky

Marco

PS: Bush should veto the McCain Amendment....it's worthless...all show and no go.

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 4:01 am

Let me see if I have the tally right here.

All those in favor of torturing UBL: Marco

All those against torturing UBL: Christy, Hugh, Joe, Mike

Unclear: Marc F.

Let me know if I have misstated your position.

Marco

Post by **mcelrah** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 8:43 pm

What do you think you would accomplish by torturing Bin Laden? Put
him on trial - but keep him in a glass bubble and don't let him have
a bully pulpit, as they have given Saddam. It's not as if either of
them knows a lot of operational detail... Much better to discredit
him than to make a martyr of him.

Saddam's henchmen are kept at a comfortable prison known as "the
petting zoo". The interrogations are not "strenuous". In one of
many proofs that you can be stupid and still be the world's last
standing superpower, the prisoners are not isolated, but are allowed
to socialize, so they can compare notes on the line of questioning,
get their stories straight...
Nevertheless, these are vain, arrogant men used to having power, who
do not suffer fools gladly. One of the interrogators, an attractive
Arab-American, told of going back to see "chemical Ali" day after
day, saying things she knew to be simplistic. Finally, out of pride,
he started correcting her, and the dam broke... - Hugh

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 2:59 am

I think that OBL and Saddam have a wealth of info that could be useful to our intelligence services and our military.

To fail to obtain this info from them would constitute gross negligence IMHO.

Marco

Flying Lobster · Post by **Flying Lobster** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 7:23 am

Marco Zee wrote:Let me see if I have the tally right here.

All those in favor of torturing UBL: Marco

All those against torturing UBL: Christy, Hugh, Joe, Mike

Unclear: Marc F.

Let me know if I have misstated your position.

Marco

I think UBL and Saddam should be reconstituted into catfood--but that's a far cry from giving sweeping powers to torture prisoners of war under the blanket endictment of fighting terrorists.

Now I wonder what the probablity is that this very list is being monitored by someone for the purposes of intelligence gathering??

marcoparanoia

Post by **mcelrah** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 1:48 pm

Agreed.? And the quality of info obtained will be much higher if they are NOT tortured.
- Hugh

Marco Zee <marcoz757@aol.com> wrote:

I think that OBL and Saddam have a wealth of info that could be useful to our intelligence services and our military.

To fail to obtain this info from them would constitute gross negligence IMHO.

Marco

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 12:43 am

Let me update the tally right here.

All those in favor of torturing OBL: Marco, Marc

All those against torturing OBL: Christy, Hugh, Joe, Mike

Unclear: Brian

Let me know if I have misstated your position.

Marco

PS: Hugh, we are not going to agree on torturing OBL but I'm glad that we agree that we should maximize useful intel from them.

Post by **mcelrah** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 8:44 am

Flying Lobster · Post by **Flying Lobster** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 12:23 pm

Marco Zee wrote:Let me update the tally right here.

All those in favor of torturing OBL: Marco, Marc

All those against torturing OBL: Christy, Hugh, Joe, Mike

Unclear: Brian

Let me know if I have misstated your position.

Marco

PS: Hugh, we are not going to agree on torturing OBL but I'm glad that we agree that we should maximize useful intel from them.

No marco, I never said anything favoring torturing OBL.

Even though I'm agnostic I don't feel this is the appropriate day for this kind of discussion. Even a die-hard neo-con can wish no ill will toward all mankind on at least this one day, no?

marcothecompassionate

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 3:35 am

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas...I certainly did

Marc,
I'll cross you off the list then....although your desire to reconstitute OBL and Saddam into catfood certainly "sounds like torture" , but maybe that's just semantics ("I think UBL and Saddam should be reconstituted into catfood-").

And I would like to wish all peoples of good will .... peace, prosperity, good health, and a happy new year. I even pray for God to change the hearts of evil-doers like OBL and Zarqawi to renounce and turn away their Satanic ways.

And just in case that fails (and it probably will, as there will always be evil people), we should be fully prepared to not only defend ourselves, but also to hunt down and kill these fanatics as successfully and thoroughly as possible.

With any luck, we might capture OBL or Zarqawi this year....then we can discuss our options again at that point.

Marco

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 3:38 am

correction: I even pray for God to change the hearts of evil-doers like OBL and Zarqawi to renounce and turn away from their Satanic ways.

Post by **brianvh** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:54 pm

Why is it unclear whether or not I'm for torturing UBL and SH?

I don't think it would accomplish anything that a good injection of chemicals and a practiced interogator wouldn't, and surviving torture would let them look manly and us look like hypocrites when we get upset about our own troops being mistreated.

I think being forced to blab away under narcotics is the far more humiliating way to go. A doped-out warlord doesn't make much of a martyr for troops to rally behind.
Then make a video of them sheepishly eating tea and crumpets and watch their supporters give up in disgust and melt away.

Flying Lobster · Post by **Flying Lobster** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 5:32 pm

Marco Zee wrote:I hope everyone had a nice Christmas...I certainly did

Marc,
I'll cross you off the list then....although your desire to reconstitute OBL and Saddam into catfood certainly "sounds like torture" , but maybe that's just semantics ("I think UBL and Saddam should be reconstituted into catfood-").

And I would like to wish all peoples of good will .... peace, prosperity, good health, and a happy new year. I even pray for God to change the hearts of evil-doers like OBL and Zarqawi to renounce and turn away their Satanic ways.

And just in case that fails (and it probably will, as there will always be evil people), we should be fully prepared to not only defend ourselves, but also to hunt down and kill these fanatics as successfully and thoroughly as possible.

With any luck, we might capture OBL or Zarqawi this year....then we can discuss our options again at that point.

Marco

I much prefere the Isreali way--just find them and eliminate them. No muss--no fuss. Once they're in custody--well, the rules of the game change. Keep it deep black.

marcoKahn

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:06 am

Marc stated: << I much prefere the Isreali way--just find them and eliminate them. No muss--no fuss. Once they're in custody--well, the rules of the game change.>>

OK Marc, I suppose the Israeli way is more effective and more politically correct.....and I guess that's why so many Arab and European countries are enamored with Israel's existence and want to see her flourish and prosper, like the Iranians have professed

So, if we kill them outright, we will be loved also as Israel is loved, and we will win "world opinion" support, and we will be the darlings of the world once again.

But if we capture them and extract info and intel from them "too forcefully", then world opinion will turn against us because we were too mean and brutal to those great humanitarians: Osama and Saddam. Not a very convincing argument, IMHO.

For the peoples of this world who can hate us for our prosperity and generosity, our way of life, and our historical spread of liberty to hundreds of millions of people, I really think our prisoner interrogation policies are NOT going to change anyone's perception of the USA. Nor do I believe we should formulate policy so as to appease these ignorant haters in the hopes that if we "prove our goodness" ONCE AGAIN, the haters will stop hating us. APPEASEMENT DOES NOT WORK but the Libs and Dems keep pushing this as policy.

Marco

Post by **mcelrah** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:47 pm

I repeat: what on earth do you think we would learn from torturing
Osama and Saddam?! There is no intelligence there that couldn't be
gotten more effectively by other means.
In the exceedingly rare case where an actual terrorist operator - not
one of these figureheads - had time-critical info needed to save
lives, we would probably use sodium pentathol to get it. Your
argument seems to be predicated on being more bloody-minded than the
terrorists. But that's not our comparative advantage: we offer
peace and prosperity, not more terror than the terrorists. - Hugh

Post by **brianvh** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:47 pm

to quote Marco and a score of Conservative ditto-heads:

"For the peoples of this world who can hate us for our prosperity and generosity, our way of life, and our historical spread of liberty to hundreds of millions of people..."

Huh?? Where do you people come up with this? When have you heard a terrorist state that they are fighting to stop our generosity and the spread of liberty? I agree they may be resentful of our way of life and prosperity that we have and they don't, but why do you keep shoveling in the bullshit about them hating freedom and our wholesome goodheartedness?

"I'm Abu, and I'm chucking this bomb because, well...I just hate freedom. If I'm really lucky I may blow up some *nice* people."

They may be afraid of democracy because they're afraid they'd be outvoted, but is that really different from our own worries that the Iraqis may vote in an Islamist government? Does that make us hate freedom?

They do hate any diversity which is non-islamist. It may sound like they hate freedom, but that's like saying you hate sugar because you know it makes you fat. You hate fat, you distrust sugar, you like sweet - but it has to be the right kind of non-fattening sweet. They hate non-islamist diversity, they distrust democracy, they like freedom so long as it's circumscribed by islamist principles.

I'm not sure why the subtlety is important to me, but I guess if you say terrorist hate freedom and generosity you've marked them as non-human, and you're doomed to never find a human solution to the terrorist problem. Killing them like germs only creates more terrorists. I don't think we've found the key to terrorism yet, but if it's found it will be by looking at the problem in all its human complexity rather than dumming it down and solving it with a sledge hammer. I'm not saying throw away the sledge hammer; but do accept there's more to it than killing bad guys.

Flying Lobster · Post by **Flying Lobster** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 9:08 pm

Marco Zee wrote:Marc stated: << I much prefere the Isreali way--just find them and eliminate them. No muss--no fuss. Once they're in custody--well, the rules of the game change.>>

OK Marc, I suppose the Israeli way is more effective and more politically correct.....and I guess that's why so many Arab and European countries are enamored with Israel's existence and want to see her flourish and prosper, like the Iranians have professed

So, if we kill them outright, we will be loved also as Israel is loved, and we will win "world opinion" support, and we will be the darlings of the world once again.

But if we capture them and extract info and intel from them "too forcefully", then world opinion will turn against us because we were too mean and brutal to those great humanitarians: Osama and Saddam. Not a very convincing argument, IMHO.

For the peoples of this world who can hate us for our prosperity and generosity, our way of life, and our historical spread of liberty to hundreds of millions of people, I really think our prisoner interrogation policies are NOT going to change anyone's perception of the USA. Nor do I believe we should formulate policy so as to appease these ignorant haters in the hopes that if we "prove our goodness" ONCE AGAIN, the haters will stop hating us. APPEASEMENT DOES NOT WORK but the Libs and Dems keep pushing this as policy.

Marco

Well--tell me--does Bush or does he not have a bounty out on OBL's head, dead or alive???

marcothegentleone

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 4:11 am

Marc,

There is a bounty on OBL, as there was on Saddam, yet, we captured Saddam alive, and didn't kill him on sight, as you suggest the Israeli's may have done, to avoid the muss and fuss.

I believe it is more productive to extract, by whatever means necessary, the max amount of intel from these tyrants, so as to round up and defeat their henchmen and followers. We can always kill them "later" if too much much and fuss does takes place. Certainly, if OBL resists capture and is killed while resisting capture, I won't lose any sleep over that, but we would lose a invaluable source of a huge amount of terror network intel, which could help us break the backs of these networks....as the old saying goes "dead men tell no tales".

So, when we capture OBL, we can interrogate him gently at first, then more forcefully later, and if absolutely necessary, we should torture him, if he is refractory to all "less forceful" forms of interrogations.

That's not blood-thirsty or vengeful or a desire to deliver more terror than the terrorists, but rather just a practical approach to obtain and extract the intel that OBL has.

Marco

Marco Zee · Post by **Marco Zee** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 5:39 am

Brian previously stated: << "For the peoples of this world who can hate us for our prosperity and generosity, our way of life, and our historical spread of liberty to hundreds of millions of people..."

Huh?? Where do you people come up with this? When have you heard a terrorist state that they are fighting to stop our generosity and the spread of liberty? I agree they may be resentful of our way of life and prosperity that we have and they don't, but why do you keep shoveling in the bullshit about them hating freedom and our wholesome goodheartedness?>>

Reply:
One might think that everybody would welcome the spread of freedom and human rights, but Fanatical Islamic Extremists (FIE) see the advancement of freedom like a freight train chugging right into their home turf and down their throats. These FIE's are a small minority even in the Arab countries, and do not want "the Arab masses" to have freedom, democracy, or human rights....this doesn't make them non-human, but it certainly makes them inhumane, as they use their terrorist tactics to kill innocent people to intimidate them into submission, not unlike other evil tyrants throughout the course of human history.

Why have so many moslems moved to Europe and the USA? The answer is to seek a better, safer, more prosperous and peaceful life, while still enjoying their religious freedoms. These "westernized" moslems are informing their relatives back in their home countries that democracy and capitalism are much better and fairer systems than the current systems in these Arab countries.

The FIE's want to be the rulers and influence peddlers of these Arab countries, and realize that these forces of democracy and capitalism have more appeal "to the people" than their "old time religion" of Arab unity and hegemony.

So Brian, I would argue that this is not a bullshit line, but instead a stark realization by the FIE's that our principles of democracy, human rights, and capitalism are indeed the greatest direct threat to these FIE's who justifiably fear their quest for power and influence will be crushed by the advancement of freedom and capitalism into the Arab world. And this is the principle reason that Al-Quaeda has attacked us, and is continuing their war against us.

The key to defeating these terrorists is to convince the Arab masses that the USA is offering the Arabs a better way of life without endangering their religious practices, with Iraq now front and center in this objective. When Iraq becomes democratized with a foundation based mostly on Islamic law, the irresistible thirst for freedom/rights/prosperity in the rest of the Arab countries, already demonstrated in several Arab countries, will quickly accelerate and grow, making the FIE's even more insignificant and undesirable. That is why the foreign terrorists are resisting with everything they have NOW, before it is too late.

So, the USA is leading the charge to bring democracy into the Arab world, and the natural desire of most humans, including Arabs, to want peace, prosperity, and dignity will eventually undermine and overwhelm the FIE minority and their 12th century philosophy.

You heard it hear first .

Marco

Post by **mcelrah** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:29 am

It says you're replying to Marc, but I think it's my post you're
responding to. Look, in the first place, these guys DON'T have a lot
of operational detail. They set broad strategic policy. Second,
torture DOESN'T yield more/better information than other means of
interrogation. Third, it's important to put them on trial in a court
of law that can be seen to be fair, without torture, so they can be
fully discredited and shown to be no better than common criminals. -
Hugh

Post by **mcelrah** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:48 am

Actually, I mostly agree with what Marco said about fundamentalists
(Muslim, Christian, Jewish (remember the guy who shot Rabin?), Hindu)
fighting a rear-guard action against the inexorable advance of
modernity. I just take exception to the USA jingoism. If democracy
comes to the Middle East, it may not look exactly like the U.S.
version. - Hugh

Post by **brianvh** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 2:23 pm

Okay Marco - since you went back and put some nuance into the statement "they hate freedom" I can find it acceptable. But simple minded statements like "they hate us...for our generosity" just really sets my teeth on edge unless placed in a more sophisticated context. It feels too much like thinking the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms, so no need for the pentagon's original request for several hundred troops in order to keep the peace. I wish it was as simple as good guys and bad guys, but it ain't, and I'll strongly object to statements which hint it may be.
I do sincerely hope your beliefs about the effects Iraq will have on the Middle East will be largely true. Regime change has happened, so any dire warnings about the dangers are now moot. I believe as you do that most Arabs do not want fundamentalists parties in power, so can only hope democracy works. But it's a fragile system at first....let's hope for the best.

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