After wading through the torture apologists on Facebook...I am at a crossroads

[Horse with no Name]

I honestly don't even think that we could clean this mess up if every Democrat and Progressive in the country showed up to vote. Of course I am not advocating not voting, but it seems more and more like an exercise in futility.

There is too much willingness from both sides to continue the agenda that was started many years ago.

How in the world can you reconcile this notion that torture is okay and justified if WE do it? How do you look at your neighbor and know that he supports raping children in front of their parents?

How can you really move forward as a nation half of the people in this country feel that way?? How can there be progress of any sort? How can you move forward as a nation when half of the folks think it is okay to slaughter young black men in the street for very minor infractions of the law--real or perceived?

But the one thing I really want to know....how do they sleep at night and how to do they settle up these terribly unchristian actions with their God?

I wish I knew.

[jberryhill]

1. Their God?

You mean the God whose instructions for military action routinely included killing non-combatants?

[Horse with no Name]

2. ....

[jberryhill]

9. They pretty much think their God is on the same team in this stuff

Here's the deal they have with their God. If they manage to whip up a huge war of "good guys" versus "bad guys" in the Middle East, then their God is going to show up and kick the living shit out of the "bad guys" while handing out halos to the "good guys".

Guess in which bunch our Christian friends think they belong?

[liberal_at_heart]

3. We live in dark times. We have had many dark times in the history of the world. The good news is

every thing happens in cycles and just as there are always dark times, there are always times when the darkness subsides and better times dawn. Until then all I can say is keep fighting for the good and look for the little good deeds that people do that show that there is love in the world because there is.

[Skidmore]

4. One of my UK friends posted an article on FB

this morning in which the demand is being made by some there that their role in torture be examined. I am beginning to think that this should be a rallying call globally since these wars serve the wealthy and the corporations. That would be my hope. People in at least 54 other nations need to be doing the same thing. And I think that something needs to be brought before the World Court. With so many nations having participated, so much CYA in progress. I would like to see Smirk and Snarl tried for war crimes.

[liberal_at_heart]

6. We cannot count on nations policing themselves. We do need the world court.

[KingCharlemagne]

5. This poll should cheer you up . . . NOT!:

A more recent poll, conducted by the Associated Press in 2013, confirmed Pew’s findings. AP found that a little more than half of Americans said they favor the U.S. government’s use of harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists to seek information about terrorist activities: 28 percent said they strongly favor them, and 23 percent moderately favored them. The same survey found that 22 percent of Americans strongly opposed harsh interrogation techniques and 16 percent moderately opposed them, with 11 percent reporting that they are either neutral or undecided.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/senate-torture-report-public-opinion/

[shraby]

7. That proves that propaganda works.

[Horse with no Name]

8. Yep.

and shows like "24" glamorized it.

[GreatGazoo]

10. the support comes because of the lie that torture produces useful information

It doesn't -- this Senate report confirms that, again.

They take polls and ask the a hypothetical: Do you support torture if it saves innocent lives? Yes or No

I think the intelligence community knows that confessions made under torture are not reliable. There are MUCH more reliable ways to get intel -- bugging, spoofing, drugging, taxi drivers, prostitutes, etc.

When the average American says they support torture they mean the imaginary kind that has value and produces useable info. Never mind that THAT only happens on the fantasy that is "24."

The Chinese methods that they based our tortures on was used primarily to elicit confessions -- NOT to get real information.

[Scuba]

11. +1

[cstanleytech]

13. Problem is if we use history then most countries rarely prosecute their own when it comes to

war crimes.
Sure they toss justice a bone or two ever now and then to gnaw on but overall its something that governments in general turn a blind eye to either for political reasons or because the government is still engaged in the activity so it doesnt want to risk shining a light on it.

[TNNurse]

14. It is a puzzle to me.

If you despise someone or some groups's behavior, how do you justify the actions that you take that are as bad as theirs??? Do these people have no personal insight? Are they blinded by anger or just arrogance?

When I was old enough to know about the death penalty, I could not grasp why anyone thought that the punishment for killing someone is killing someone???????

Torture to answer to torture is just lowering yourself to the level of the people you are opposing. It gets "us" wallowing in the mud with our enemies.

[Jack Rabbit]

15. I think genocide is wrong and we did that, too

Just ask the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains.

I think slavery is wrong, but we did that, too.

These are facts. Owing up to them, at one level, is no more difficult than acknowledging the Pythagorean theorem. On another, it is quite different. It gets personal. Some Americans did this. Others are OK with it and voted for the butchers who ordered it. Dick Cheney is one of the butchers who ordered it, and he's either in denial about it or is just denying it in order to keep up a cynical legal defense. We shouldn't be surprised that he says of the report, without even reading it, that it is "full of crap." After all, it refutes everything he's said about torture, including that these are merely "enhanced interrogation techniques" and not torture.

To that end, the best thing to do would be to see that Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials, including Bush himself, should be prosecuted for their crimes. A full accounting of their actions in public in which the architects of the US torture program will confront the evidence and face their accusers is the first step we all must take to reconciling one of the most hideous episodes of our history.