anyone who knows anything about torture, including former CIA, including whateverthefuck is the name of the israeli version of the CIA, EVEN SAUDI ARABIA, knows that torture doesn't work in all but the most extreme circumstances

^ I think you forgot 9/11

nocal:
anyone who knows anything about torture, including former CIA, including whateverthefuck is the name of the israeli version of the CIA, EVEN SAUDI ARABIA, knows that torture doesn't work

It sure is FUN though.

P.S. It's the Mossad. Ghost would be very sad.

I was going to say Mosfet, then realized I had forgot about Poland, and quietly hit Back.

At least you didn't say Mos Def.

Def.

Mostly.

Good, because torture is expressly permitted in the US Constitution... So this shouldn't even be a debate.

it's not about whether it's permitted (well to me it isn't...) but it is about whether or not it works. and if SAUDI FUCKING ARABIA gets rid of torture, you know it isn't exactly working

Maybe SAUDI FUCKING ARABIA just suffered a conscience-crippling case of the HEEBIE FUCKING JEEBIES.

The Constitution applies to citizens, not brown people.

Maybe SAUDI FUCKING ARABIA just suffered a conscience-crippling case of the HEEBIE FUCKING JEEBIES.

maybe it was just the heebs

could be jeebs

I think a big part of the problem is that the term 'torture' is tossed around like the word 'obscene'.

To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, 'I can't define what is obscene, but I know it when I see it.' This is a common position amongst most people.

The trap here is that you may find something obscene while I find it perfectly acceptable, and vice versa.

The same idea can be applied to torture, meaning some interrogation techniques may in your eyes be considered torture, while in my eyes, it may seem unpleasant, but not be torture.

Now in the grand scheme of things, Nocal is right, torture itself is generally uneffective since the receiver will tell or confess to anything in an effort to make the torture stop. However, what about the threat of torture? And perhaps not even the threat, but the hint that torture may be inflicted.

In that case, no one was touched, let alone tortured, but some would still consider that to be torture because it made the recipient 'unconfortable'.

Oh, and the Mossad doesn't bother with torture. They perfer to assassinate, to which I say 'Good Show'.

The Mossad might not bother with torture themselves, but it is absolutely rampant-Israel is notorious in the international community for it.

Anyway, the whole argument is worthless because torture is illegal domestically, and under international law-and its pretty specifically defined. The temperature fucking with, water-boarding, all the stuff mentioned is illegal. Bush specifically says it lives up to 'international obligations' because he doesn't want to say 'law'. He says 'have been fully disclosed to appropriate members of the United States Congress' which might be true, but you have to take his word for it because he won't turn over documents vital to validating that.

Plus, as I understand it, the signing statement about the law basically invalidated it anyway under executive privilege. And there seems to be no over site of it-there certainly isn't shit in the 'black sites' which of course don't exist anyway. The whole point of the CIA, besides the analysis element, is to have illegal operations. Thats like, 75% of the reason shit is classified. And all of this says nothing about giving people over to foreign countries for them to be tortured there, or accepting the word of random ass-people in Yemen that so and so is a terrorist and thats why they get captured in the first place. So, yes, this government probably tortures people. And threatens them with dogs and scares them with menstrual blood.