"The State has the right to torture innocent people."

[bleever]

What amazed and horrified me most about Abu Ghraib wasn't actually the medievally gruesome treatment of other human beings, up to and including torturing people to death.

It was the "wide net" approach: Sweep them all up, related or not. Get as much information as you can, as quickly as you can. Use "tough", even "harsh" methods.

The guilty will give up information that may save lives.

The innocent: not our problem. In fact, it's our duty to the safety of the American people to torture a certain number of innocent people in the pursuit of evildoers.


Torturing innocent people.

As a right established under law. That's what happend to habeus corpus and the Geneva Conventions today.



This will not stand.

[Poll_Blind]

1. This will not stand, but it will stand for a week, a month, a year...

...or a decade. That it stands at all, or that it stands for a moment is miserable thing.

PB

[bleever]

3. Absolutely. But I swear that the hearts of many people are today

committed to seeing this undone, in practice, and in law, as soon as we can. Mine is, and yours is, and we've got a lot of other good determined people with us.

[xxqqqzme]

2. you wanna bet?

the smirking serial killer ALWAYS gets his way come hell or high water. First on the chopping block in January '07 is your (& my) social security!

[bleever]

5. Not gonna happen.

Smirky will live forever and conquer all, just as Caesar and Napoleon and Hitler did: only in his dreams.

It may well take too damn long, and there will surely be too many good people killed, mutilated, or devastated, but it will end.

I'll be consumed with what I can do to make it as soon as possible, until it happens.

[RevCheesehead]

4. What I want to know is, how can the military support this??

Look, I saw "A Few Good Men." In the end, the marines were cleared of all but one charge: Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer. When one asked, "but why? We didn't do anything wrong!", the other replied "Yes, we did. We were supposed to support people like Sanitago - people who didn't have anyone else to speak for them. We were wrong, because we failed him."

Doesn't that principle apply here as well?

[The2ndWheel]

6. Yeah, that's what the military is for

[BeFree]

7. It's the rallying call

And from this we will see just who is serious about saving America and who is just a blowhard.

This awful experience will end and we will be stronger for it. There is no other choice but to fight.... the line has been drawn and the bad guys have crossed over it.

[bleever]

8. "Torture the Innocent! For All of Us!"

Somebody make me a poster.

[Patsy Stone]

9. This isn't just about torturing the innocent

They are already torturing the innocent.

No, this does something much more frightening and insidious than legitimize the torture that the Congress knows about and that which they want to ignore. This legislation puts us, you and me, at risk to be taken from our beds and put in prison; designated as "enemy combatants" for anything the government might not like today. That is the most frightening aspect.

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html">Froomkin:

Here's just one example of what's in the bill that few people are aware of. Yale professor http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-ackerman28sep28,1,1031691.story?ctrack=1&cset=true">Bruce Ackerman writes in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

"This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops 'during an armed conflict,' it also allows him to seize anybody who has 'purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.' This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison."

---

And that's America today.

Will it stand? No. Will it take a Constitutional Amendment to throw out the Writ? Yes. Do I know how long this will stand? Heavens no. Everyday it is exists is one day too long, but it's already been too long. For any of us to think that without this they weren't going to torture anymore is naive.

This is about chipping away at the foundation of what it means to be an American citizen, the rights we have been granted, and, mostly, for covering their own guilty asses.

[bleever]

10. Have you made some good points here? Certainly.

Do they care about whether or not this law is overturned? They may or may not. Are they concentrated on surfing the entire process to their own benefit? Goodness yes!

BTW: Remember that there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. But we should add to the list: Unknown knowns.

Stuff they know, but ain't telling.