Will it be acceptable to you if our captured U.S. troops are water-boarded in custody by the enemy?This is the unavoidable consequence of Bush's Geneva-busting deal with the pushover John McCain:
If we make it legal to torture, THEN IT WILL BE LEGAL FOR THE ENEMY TO TORTURE OUR PEOPLE!
If it's ok to torture because we need the information "really badly", then IT WILL BE OK FOR THE ENEMY TO TORTURE OUR TROOPS WHEN THEY NEED INFORMATION "REALLY BADLY"!
How about stress positions? You got any problem with that tactic being used on American soldiers?We say it's ok to do it, they have no reason not to do it.
And that means we are setting the rules by which OUR OWN PEOPLE will eventually be tortured.
This is a simple argument and should be a slam dunk WINNING argument, so why the fuck can't anybody on the correct side of this issue make it clear:
IF YOU ARE FOR TORTURE, YOU ARE AGAINST OUR TROOPS.
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Is it acceptable when the terrorists capture our soldiers, shoot them execution style, drag them up and down the street behind a car, set them on fire and hang their bodies from a bridge? I think I would choose a little dunking if I was given the choice. Unfortunately, our soldiers that had that done to them weren't given the luxury of a choice. Did I mention that they were decapitated, too?
At 8:56 AM, 
At 5:27 PM,
Royalking, besides the fact that the people you are referring to were Blackwater Security personnel and NOT American soldiers, you moron, is beside the point.
Tyson's premise IS the real point that everyone should be repeating over and over. If we say it's okay to do it to them, then we simply cannot cry foul when they do it to us.
And the other point that has been made over and over again is that these techniques DO NOT WORK. Period. We've been told over and over again by CIA, NSA and military leaders quite clearly and definitively that these harsh interrogation techniques DO NOT PRODUCE GOOD INTELLIGENCE.
What part of inneffective do you not understand? Sure you want to see real terrorists tortured, so do I, just because they are warped coldblooded killers, but there are certainly people and situations all over the world for that to happen with. But the American government is NOT the entity that should be throwing out the main tenets of civilized nations that we helped write in the first place.
And on top of all that, just look at how fucked up the military and CIA got it with the prisoners they DO have! The vast majority of "detainees" at Guitmo were not terrorists at all! Most of them were regular Iraqi citizens, cab drivers, businessmen, etc., many of whom were 'reported' to US personnel by their personal enemies and they had nothing at all to do with terrorism-- but they still got the same treatment and were held for years incommunicado. But you rightwingnuts snicker and say, "Well, so we bagged a few innocents-- collateral damage. It's all part of fighting a war."