Irrelevant Incumbrepublocrats
After explaining why, “There Will Never Be a Middle Ground,” Bruce Bialosky asks four very cogent questions:
We deserve answers to four questions from the Democrats who continue pursuing this issue:
1) The Democrats kept asserting that use of “torture†techniques has been a major recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. They repeat this mantra at every opportunity. If so, please let us know how they know this. How many terrorists that have been recruited attribute their joining the cause to our “torture†of other terrorists? Do they have a Gallup Poll on this? Do they have in-depth studies of the terrorists and their motivations? We deserve to see this material so we can make an educated analysis of the situation. Without such information it is reasonable to suppose that someone spouted this out once and now it has been repeated a thousand times with no substantiation.
2) The point that the techniques that have been used do not produce results. After the mantra about the recruiting tool, this comes out of their mouths next. Whether you believe the techniques used should be used or not, to purport that torture does not work defies hundreds of years of use of torture. Surely some torture was done just because the people involved were sadistic. But please don’t foist some study by a PhD upon us and ask us to buy that. In fact, it is clear that the CIA personnel involved have disclosed that vital information was derived from the prisoners. Tell us you are against it for moral reasons, but don’t create a lie that it does not work. That is insulting to our common sense.
3) Please explain why the Bush Administration is responsible when leading members of Congress from both parties were fully aware of what was being done and condoned the actions?
4) Please define what you are going to do to extract information from high-level prisoners of war. If you don’t like the techniques used then what are you going to do? We were not putting these people on the rack or cutting off fingers. In the realm of techniques of information extraction, these are relatively mild and people of good conscience can disagree whether they were actually torture. But now that these procedures have been taken out of our playbook, what are we going to do when we have a legitimate suspect and a plot to blow-up O’Hare has been discovered? We deserve to know how you are going to save thousands of innocent lives.
Until we have a clarification on these points we cannot take these people seriously. It appears they are against military action and just drowning in their hatred of whatever Bush-Cheney did during their term. Real matters of grave seriousness are at stake here and from all appearances we cannot take the current administration and their cohorts seriously. That, folks, is scary.
Personally, I quit taking any of them seriously long ago. If they weren’t screwing up my country so badly, I would just ignore all of these clowns as irrelevant to my pursuit of happiness. â—„Daveâ–º
The torture as a recruiting tool is clearly ridiculous. Al Qaeda clearly tortures, and if being a member of Al Qaeda makes you more likely to both commit and be subjected to torture, then it would be a lousy recruitment tool. We give them plenty of recruitment tools: Occupation of their land, the killing of their friends and families, our support of Israel, and our sinful lifestyles.
Torture doesn’t provide reliable results. If it is used, it should be used to extract information, not to prove guilt, and that information only considered valid after independent verification. That said, I’m sure it does sometimes give valuable results. I’m sure I could come up with a situation in which I think it should be done, but never as a matter of policy. Psychologically, once we start talking about effectiveness, people stop thinking about the more ethical concerns of whether or not we are willing to stoop to torture.
Any of those in Congress who were involved with the authorization should be held accountable. This doesn’t lessen the responsibility of the Executive. I’m not sure how far that should go into those who just had knowledge. National security and secrecy are touchy grounds for whistleblowing.
If torture is ok, then lets make it public that we do so, and legal. There should never be a single law made in this nation that is hidden. Can you imagine being pulled over and handed a ticket, then asking what law you broke and being told it is classified and you just have to pay the fine? If you want to torture, fine, lets discuss where the boundaries are and rewrite the laws.
Well said, Steel. Personally, I don’t regard waterboarding, or any of the lesser psyops techniques discussed, torture. Many of our troops go through those and worse as part of their training. I reckon severe sustained pain and/or disfigurement is torture, and it cheapens the word to call mind games torture.
Speaking of well-hidden laws, try to find a statute anywhere that requires a citizen to pay income tax on wages. 🙂 â—„Daveâ–º
Well, there is the 16th Amendment. Unfortunately, believing the income tax is unconstitutional doesn’t much affect how likely you are to get prosecuted for evading it.
I imagine there are ways of waterboarding someone that would constitute torture. I’m all for having a national, or even international discussion on the matter, so at least we all know where we stand and can quit arguing over the past on legal grounds.
Agreed, but it is still a fascinating subject to delve into. The 16th gave the government no new power to tax, it only lifted the restriction on taxing rents on property and other non-wage revenue. Aaron Russo’s “From Freedom to Fascism” covers this subject well in the first few of its 11 segments, if it interests you at all.
Reasonable minds can disagree on the definition of torture. If mental anguish is torture, then we also need to put a muzzle on Hilary Clinton’s shrill voice too. Every henpecked man in America cringes at the sound of it. 🙂 â—„Daveâ–º
Back to the Income Tax subject; my two cents… It is my understanding that the 16th Amendment was not actually ratified by the number of states needed to make it have passed. Dave? You probably know that answer. Yes, Aaron Russo’;s does provide a great overview of the whole income tax issue. As for still losing your house and/or belongings and even freedom is still possible because the Judges DO NOT inform the jury of their duty, nor do they tell them (Jurors) that they are who makes call of law or no law. The judges don’t tell
them that they(Judges) are only servants to them(Jurors).
If enough people were informed of the power they as a juror has then we would see a lot more IRS tax cases won by the innocent taxed and we would see the IRS loosing. If just one person on each jury was informed then he/she could educate the other eleven but still it only takes one out of twelve and the law is not law.
Furthermore, does anybody know just how much of the income tax goes to running the government? It used to be about 30% to 25% BUT now none of it goes to the running of our government, it all goes to paying the interest to the , to Federal Reserve.??? A private bank, which prints money on paper, loans it to the government at interest which has to also be borrowed from the Fed?? Oh, and the money is paper backed by ……gold, just kidding, backed by … oh nothing but our good faith in the Federal Reserve. GEEEEZZZZ, at least man is not greedy and can handle that sort of responsibility. SO, most people work four months of the year to give the Federal Reserve interest payments on debt which is increasing at such an exponential rate that soon, even if every american paid 100% income tax we still would not be able to make a dent in the debt to a private bank, which has never been audited, so private no one really knows who owns it. Wow! I couldn’t make this sh#t up if I tried, I would think, boy I can’t write that no one would believe me, that is just stupid. Then I woke up in America of today, thinking we had the America we were sold on in grade school. Remember that America, Land of the free, land of liberty, the place everyone in the world looked up to. The America that was the little guy who grew up and was the big hero. Home of Patriots, remember the “minutemen” when it was a proud duty to have a firearm in the home, to protect the family and neighbors. That is the America we need to get back to and leave for the next generation. Not a land desolate, owned by international banks and where the next generations are just working to pay interest to same.
That’s all for now, things to ponder, thanks for listening.
Smile! We still have a chance to wake up and inform those who don’t know, or don’t care because they haven’t snapped out of their dazed existence.
That is right, Tribal; the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified. I bought and read Red Beckman’s, “The Law that Never Was” back during the time of Ruby Ridge and Waco. It was a huge and painstakingly documented volume, and his evidence, much of it reproduced in the book, was utterly compelling. Even the wiki link above sounds convincing; but it also shows how little regard the Federal courts have for his efforts. 🙁
Jury nullification works, if you can get past the judge; but I’d sure hate to count on it if I was a defendant. Most sheeple have never heard of the concept of a jury ignoring the judges admonishment, and trying the law as well as the facts. If you ever get on a jury, do not mention anything about it before the jury actually starts deliberation, or the judge will toss you off the panel.
I have enjoyed watching the scales fall from your eyes, buddy. I hope you are dragging that Raven out of the morass with you. 😉 â—„Daveâ–º