Here we go again with cloudy thinkers having more concern and passion for the enemy than they have will or desire to do the right thing; protect Americans. I couldn't care less what happens to terroists suspects. They're murderous thugs and they deserve anything bad that comes their way. That said, I believe we need to be willing to use as harsh of interrogation techniques as necessary on suspects we know has info that could mean the difference between life or death of Americans, but only harsh enough to still allow us to obtain accurate info. Just how harsh is too harsh? Only the experts can answer that, but I do know going strictly by the Army field manual will get us nowhere with these ruthless terror suspects.

It is the cloudy thinkers who don't give a damn what this country stands for, what its principles are and have been for many decades.

It is those individuals who seem to espouse the idea of torture, and lowering OUR standards to those of the criminals.

I don't care if we kill all the enemy *******s in a firefight. I don't care if we keep them in prison for life, or execute them, if they are proven guilty (or caught in the act). But holding someone for 6+ years for no damn good reason proven, that you cannot or will not substantiate even in a military tribunal, is BS.

We are Americans. We are supposed to be better than the pieces of feces we are fighting. We should not lower our standards to theirs!!

If you torture, you have no moral ground to stand on to tell your enemies to treat your people humanely when your enemies capture them - none . . .

You're five hundred miles off the East Coast at 20,000 feet going 450 knots with 250 passengers, heading to France. There's a bomb in the cargo compartment, but you can't get in. Only the bad guy has the combination. The U.S Marshall has him locked up and Superman is busy with kryptonite. We have twenty minutes before the bomb goes boom. Who do we call? T.B.Bechtel and the Delco battery man or the lollipop kid who's busy rooting around in the garbage can. Since I'm not a do-gooder, I know what I'd do. I'm only partially civilized.

For me, it has absolutely nothing to do with right or wrong. There are many things done in combat that are morally wrong. It has nothing to do with the image of the ugly American. There will always be someone out there who hates American for one reason or another. And it has nothing to do with avenging the 9/11 victims. They're all dead and nothing will bring them back. I feel sorry for the families that have to deal with that, but nothing we do today will change what happened on that day.

It has everything to do with being smart about how we collect intelligence information. The simple truth is that if you apply enough pain to a person, that individual will tell you what he or she thinks you want to know. Doesn't mean that it's the truth; it only means that the prisoner was focused on stopping the pain and said whatever it took to stop it. Then it goes beyond that, and this is where I am genuinely surprised at the military experience in this forum. Information obtained through torture will be the basis for the next mission. That means that US troops will venture out into the unknown based on "intelligence" that was obtained by some poor SOB who said whatever it took to stop the pain. This will lead to a couple of possibilities: the mission will be a complete waste of time because there was nothing there or the troops will waltz unprepared into a bad situation because they were looking for one thing and ended up finding another. Murphy's Law dictates that it's usually something that gives the bad guys every advantage and puts our guys at an extreme disadvantage. It has nothing to do with being nice, right or tough and has everything to do with reliability. Policies are built on intelligence information, so it's extremely important that we collect it correctly.

The so-called "ticking bomb" scenario is way overplayed. That comes from watching Jack Bauer do it with 100% accuracy on TV. In real life, it doesn't work that way. First of all, we cannot afford to underestimate our enemy. We are dealing with a smart, sophisticated enemy who thinks things through. If there's one thing we learned from 9/11, it's that the bad guys know how to compartmentalize their operations probably better than we do ours. Unless we catch another Kalid Sheik Mohammed, all we'll have to deal with are low-level, dirt-poor, ignorant SOBs who bought into the religious hyperbole but really doesn't know anything other than his specific instructions/orders.

Conventional intelligence techniques still work and they work very effectively. I'm afraid we've allowed our emotions to cloud our thinking in how we fight this war.

And just to be clear: I have no sympathy for these ba$tards. But beating unreliable information out of them, in the end, only lets them win after they were captured. How dumb is that?

quote:

Originally posted by Fankhouser:
You're five hundred miles off the East Coast at 20,000 feet going 450 knots with 250 passengers, heading to France. There's a bomb in the cargo compartment, but you can't get in. Only the bad guy has the combination. The U.S Marshall has him locked up and Superman is busy with kryptonite. We have twenty minutes before the bomb goes boom. Who do we call? T.B.Bechtel and the Delco battery man or the lollipop kid who's busy rooting around in the garbage can. Since I'm not a do-gooder, I know what I'd do. I'm only partially civilized.

If I have all that info I would just asked the guy who gave it to me where the bomb is.

In reading this serious discussion and it is...the reason we had the geneva convention probably in the first place..besides the fact that it is humane..is that we dont want our soldiers tortured in the ways we would come up with..however, that never worked..they only looked at us as being weak..and the one experience the guy had with the german oma and umpa..I experienced as a child when my fly went to germany after the war...most of these people are brainwashed..like the taliban and the middle east period..they dont have free press or news programs arguing amoungst themselves like we do here ..hearing both sides..they only get one side..kill the american Godless infidels...now with all that harshness said..from a woman who doesnt have ...you know whatskis...i think we have ways now..without using torture...give them a shot of whatever that stuff is that makes a person talk..man you can get whatever you want out of them with no pain at all...I know I was given that shot during a dental thing and I sang like a bird....as advanced as we are in executing criminals with chemicals instead of the electric chair..why not use some chemicals that are given to the terrorists...that would make them answer any question asked of them...and when its over they know nothing ..they just gave us the answers we needed..what is wrong with that..and please dont say ..we have to have t heir permission...they didnt get permsision from us to kill our sons and daughters..dont even want to hear it...we are fighting something we are not use to...PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT AFRAID TO DIE... than you...