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What are some justifications you've heard from RWers for torture?

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darkism Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:36 PM
Original message
What are some justifications you've heard from RWers for torture?
I'm doing a sociology paper and could use some actual justifications you've heard from these lunatics on why torturing prisoners is acceptable.

Thanks :p
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ayeshahaqqiqa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:37 PM
Response to Original message
1. They caused 911
and nothing is too bad to happen to them. The "them" usually includes anyone who is from the Middle East or is Muslim.
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wtmusic Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:38 PM
Response to Original message
2. They usually don't call it torture
"Valuable interrogation techniques to help stop the terrorists"
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merwin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:39 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. Everyone we put in Gitmo is a terrorist, and deserves to be tortured
because they hate our freedoms.

Also that it's the only way to get information out of a terrorist.
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Ilsa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:40 PM
Response to Reply #2
6. That's one I've heard alot also, and it is easily refuted
by the experience that at some point, the prisoner will say anything he/she thinks you want to hear to stop the torture. It really isn't effective, from what I've heard.
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Ilsa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:40 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. I hink Rush Limbog said they were no worse than fraternity pranks. eom
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Vincardog Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:39 PM
Response to Original message
3. "WE' have to do everything we can to stop the next 9/11
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ironman202 Donating Member (608 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:39 PM
Response to Original message
4. the ticking bomb...
you catch "A" and he knows "B" is about to blow up a school. You have to torture A in order to prevent B from killing the school.
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brainshrub Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:42 PM
Response to Original message
8. "They deserved it" or "Why are you siding with terrorists" or:
"Why don't you care about the zygotes." or "Clinton did the same thing." or "Your just against the war." or "They would do even worse to us." or "This is a new kind of war, we have to give our troops permission to do whatever it takes." or "That's not really torture." or "it was just a few bad apples." or "The perps have already been punished."

Or whatever.

After the Schiavo mess, I gave up trying to talk to these people. They are beyond reason.
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Warren Stupidity Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:51 PM
Response to Original message
9. The constitution only protects US citizens.
Heard frequently uttered by ass-hat Jay Severin (Extreme Boar). No explanation given for why the police continue to arrest people who kill visitors to this country.

(Citizens do have superior rights, where explicitly stated in the constitution, such as holding certain offices etc. however those cases are EXPLICIT exceptions and more generally the constitution refers to 'the people' meaning, oddly enough, the people.)
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theshadow Donating Member (618 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:52 PM
Response to Original message
10. You should check out Alan Dershowitz's justification of it...
... and his incredibly sick "torture warrant" theory. For a sample see: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/
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seabeyond Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:54 PM
Response to Original message
11. it is just frat boy play, per limbaugh
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HysteryDiagnosis Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 07:56 PM
Response to Original message
12. Because they are just following orders... have you ever read
Edited on Mon Jul-25-05 08:07 PM by 4MoronicYears
about or seen the movie about (William Shatner was in it believe it or not) the experiment done at a college to see how far a person would/could go in order to "accomplish the mission"?


http://encyclopedia.worldvillage.com/s/b/Milgram_experiment
The Milgram experiment was a famous scientific experiment of social psychology. The experiment was first described by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University in an article titled Behavioral Study of Obedience published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963, and later summarized in his 1974 book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. It was intended to measure the willingness of a participant to obey an authority who instructs the participant to do something that may conflict with the participant's personal conscience.

http://methods.fullerton.edu/chapter3.html

http://www.prisonexp.org/legnews.htm

Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment
Review by Hans Sherrer
Prison Legal News, July 9, 2003

The quiet Sunday morning of August 14, 1971 was broken by the wail of sirens as the Palo Alto, California police swept thorough town arresting nine people. The suspects were handcuffed, read their rights and subjected to the degradation of the booking process after being transported to the Stanford County Prison (SCP). So began the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), one of the most important psychology experiments in this country's history.

The brainchild of Stanford University Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo, the SPE was designed to study how psychologically "normal" people would react to role playing as prisoners and guards while being immersed in a simulated prison environment for two weeks. To do this a mock prison, the SCP, was set-up in the basement of Stanford's psychology building. For realism bars were put on windows, the cells were made of steel bars, there was a "yard" and "chow hall" area, and a windowless "hole." Surveillance cameras allowed Professor Zimbardo and his assistants to monitor the SCP 24 hours a day.


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Ready4Change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:01 PM
Response to Original message
13. "They aren't people, they're terrorists."
Edited on Mon Jul-25-05 08:01 PM by Ready4Change
Gone from their minds is the concept of innocent till proven guilty, one of the things which I feel denotes a good and just society.

Frankly, RWers lack of critical thinking skills terrorizes me, which I think should enable me to torture them. Sadly, I believe in decent American ideals which 1) insist I PROVE RWers to be terrorists, and 2) STILL won't allow me to commit torture.

Just more proof that RWers truly don't "get" what America is all about. Blind, arrogant fools.
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Eugene Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:04 PM
Response to Original message
14. Terrorists are hardened against conventional means of interrogation
and trained to exploit rules of civilized conduct.

And of course, there's the ticking bomb excuse.

The so-called rights of terrorists are offset
by the rights of their victims.
("What about the 3000 dead on 9/11?")

Even if a confession extracted by torture is unreliable,
the subject may give up other useful info about
his organization.

And finally, the "they're nothing but savages" excuse.
Torture is acceptable to them.
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johnfunk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:37 PM
Response to Original message
15. "Much more entertaining than the WWE...
... especially if it's Moozlim towelheads!"

oK, I haven't heard it -- but you know there are more'n a few redstatenecks who feel just thta way.
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leftofthedial Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:39 PM
Response to Original message
16. it all pretty much boils down to might makes right
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Kraklen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:40 PM
Response to Original message
17. There was some asshole here earlier...
claiming that it wasn't that bad. Just a little embarassing.
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annabanana Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:40 PM
Response to Original message
18. You just CAN'T TIE THE PRESIDENTS HANDS
in dealing with these people! He has to have the greatest possible latitude...9/11 "changed everything"
besides....
They Behead People
and besides
Saddam killed thousands and thousands of his own people....

(You never said they had to make much sense)
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annabanana Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:43 PM
Response to Original message
19. "Those who can make you believe absurdities
Can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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kimchi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-05 01:53 AM
Response to Reply #19
24. Thanks for the quote, Annabanana
I'm putting it in my sigline!
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bloom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:44 PM
Response to Original message
20. ...
"War is hell and bad things happen under war, it is unrealistic to expect anything different."

And besides - "there was only one isolated incident at Abu Ghraib"
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sakabatou Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-25-05 08:50 PM
Response to Original message
21. Haven't heard anything yet...
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kansasblue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-05 12:29 AM
Response to Original message
22. I heard this...
that the war on terror will just never end and we should just nuke the middle east and get it over with.

It made me sick.
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Fescue4u Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-05 12:39 AM
Response to Original message
23. Just a shrug of the sholders
I forget the exact line so I'll paraphrase "Muslims expect that kind of treatment as its part of their culture, similiar to the beheadings they dish out etc", with a shrug of the shoulders.



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DistressedAmerican Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-05 02:53 AM
Response to Original message
25. And I Quote...
Edited on Tue Jul-26-05 02:54 AM by DistressedAmerican
From a passerby at an anti-torture rally on the 4th who shoved the bird in my face:

"I don't care who gets tortured as long as I am free."

I politly informed him that he was a fascist pig...
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bdot Donating Member (298 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-05 04:14 AM
Response to Original message
26. Since they had worse torture techniques, ours is OK and should be enjoyed.
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rman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-26-05 04:51 AM
Response to Original message
27. Geneva convention does not apply because they are illegal combatants
sorry no source
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