![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumBecause I spent much of today playing "whack-a-mole" at HuffPo.
Why?
Because George Bush admitted to more crimes.
Specifically he said he'd had Khalid Sheik Mohammad tortured, and would do it again.
He said he'd do it to, "save lives," but we know that's a myth; the myth of the honest answer.
The Washington Post had a recent article explaining that very thing (which anyone who has been reading me for the past six years... hence the growing collections of prize tickets from playing whack-a-mole with the torture mongers and apologists, has known for oh... six years, or so).
Dan Froomkin has a nice wrap up on the subject, but the money quotation is probably this:
Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the Bush administration's argument for torture.
That's why Sunday's front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists.
Finn and Warrick reported that "not a single significant plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaida's brutal treatment -- and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms."
What a surprise. Beat on someone and he tells lies. Those lies can't be corroborated (or disproven) and limited assets to chase down plot and threats are diverted into blind alleys of wasted effort.
And George Bush, says he'd do it all over again, "to save lives."
Arrogant, ignorant, asshole.
Ok, so what does this mean? It ought to mean we try him, haul the evils he caused to happen into the harsh light of day, and (in a just world) sentence him to live the rest of his (I'd hope very long) life in prison.
If not, we can hope he is foolish enough to accept an invitation to Spain.
For really poetic justice someone might, while he's visiting Poppy in Kennebunkport, decide to invoke the "Noriega Doctrine" his father created, and swoop in and kidnap him to the Hague.
None of those, sadly, are going to happen. Therefore I shan't buy the champagne just yet, but a person can dream.
Why?
Because George Bush admitted to more crimes.
Specifically he said he'd had Khalid Sheik Mohammad tortured, and would do it again.
He said he'd do it to, "save lives," but we know that's a myth; the myth of the honest answer.
The Washington Post had a recent article explaining that very thing (which anyone who has been reading me for the past six years... hence the growing collections of prize tickets from playing whack-a-mole with the torture mongers and apologists, has known for oh... six years, or so).
Dan Froomkin has a nice wrap up on the subject, but the money quotation is probably this:
Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the Bush administration's argument for torture.
That's why Sunday's front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists.
Finn and Warrick reported that "not a single significant plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaida's brutal treatment -- and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms."
What a surprise. Beat on someone and he tells lies. Those lies can't be corroborated (or disproven) and limited assets to chase down plot and threats are diverted into blind alleys of wasted effort.
And George Bush, says he'd do it all over again, "to save lives."
Arrogant, ignorant, asshole.
Ok, so what does this mean? It ought to mean we try him, haul the evils he caused to happen into the harsh light of day, and (in a just world) sentence him to live the rest of his (I'd hope very long) life in prison.
If not, we can hope he is foolish enough to accept an invitation to Spain.
For really poetic justice someone might, while he's visiting Poppy in Kennebunkport, decide to invoke the "Noriega Doctrine" his father created, and swoop in and kidnap him to the Hague.
None of those, sadly, are going to happen. Therefore I shan't buy the champagne just yet, but a person can dream.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(frozen) Fytte the last
Date: 2010-06-08 06:57 pm (UTC)You dislike the ways in which I perceive, and so portray, those who advocate for torture. Be they fools who ignore the evidence of those who have done interrogations (from the Inquisition, to the present), in favor of presidential speechwriter and politicians, or those whom I say favor evil (like Eugene Volokh who values it as a social control).
I only lose the claim to a reasoned defense if my accusations of stupidity, and evil, are being made ad hominem. If I said torture doesn't work because Pol Pot was an evil man. then yes, you are right, that's not reasoned argument.
If, however I said, Joseph Stalin liked to use torture, which (for reasons x,y,z, we know to not work, and for reasons a,b,c, which are evil in their ends), and therefore he was either ill-informed, stupid, or evil. I have made a reasoned argument that he is, at least one of those things.
Whether Terry likes it or not, there is a line between real torture and a "time-out".
Whether you like it, or not, I have never argued otherwise.
Whether this line falls above, below, or somewhere in the middle of the list of "enhanced interrogation techniques" is something on which good people of good will can disagree.
There is a caveat in there, which, I think, is telling. People of good will. We disagree. So the question is really, whether, or not, we are people of good will. I'd have to say, from more than a decade of watching you argue; on any number of subjects, in much the same way, I am not certain you are a person of good will.
Terry loses his claim to a reasoned argument when his defense of his position is to call those who disagree with him stupid and evil.
It may hurt your feelings to that your support for torture puts you in a camp with Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein and any other number of stupid and evil people, but that's not my problem.
You're the one advocating torture.
(frozen) Re: Fytte the last
Date: 2010-06-08 07:01 pm (UTC)I am not quite to the point of being done with you; but I am tired of repeating myself, as you repeat the same trope (Look, this person; who has an incentive to lie disagrees with you. Admit you are wrong, or admit you are blind to the evidence, etc., etc., etc..)
I've let you speak your piece, but I have only so many walls to bang my head against, and hitting the same one, the same way, shows either that I am unable to learn, or that I enjoy it.
So, my place, my choice. I'm tired of it.
I'm done.