People are allowed to have an opinion, those that have a narrative to deceive because their Monarch didn't get chosen should not.
I keep hearing this, but I have never once seen proof that a news article directed a certain narrative about Trump’s guilt.
You must not watch CNN much...
According to most people who make this claim, neither do they, so where is a basis this is coming from?
I’ll sit here and wait for someone that posts me a link from CNN news clearly stating Trump had broken a law without also stating a reason on how he didn’t break a law.
I will wait for someone to post something that says Trump conspired with Russia because this happened in a news article as well.
Tin-foil hat please. It's only a wacky conspiracy theory if it's on the other side apparently. Bush conspired to blow up the World Trade Center. Bush 'knew' there were no WMD in Iraq even though they had used them on their own people. That's because he's an evil war-monger who wanted to slaughter thousands of innocents. But Pizzagate is total fantasy because it involves somebody on 'my' side. Everybody is so full of shit these days I'm starting to wonder why I bother posting anymore...
Btw - For the record, Pizzagate is BS but so is the fantasy that Bush is a mass-murderer.
Regardless of whether Bush personally knew that the WMD claims were bogus, his administration ran torture camps. That is certainly evil enough for me.
How many lives were saved by the 'torture' (ie: waterboarding) camps? We'll likely never know. I'd need to know that before I dismissed him as 'evil'. It's not possible to quantify lives saved so we'll never know how many people are alive today because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki either, or the Korean War or any other questionable action of government. Sit on your high horse and judge people who have to make real decisions if you like, but don't tell me that they're 'evil'.
Committing heinous acts for some nebulous remotely possible future good is evil, if the word has any meaning at all. If you look at the worst actors in history they were very often those who fell in love with making the "difficult decisions" and "doing what is necessary". This is just more of the same - especially considering that the general ineffectiveness of torture as way of informing reliable information is pretty well documented.
As for "high horse" I would be careful with that, because for someone who claims we shouldn't judge, you do so fairly often. You were pretty quick to judge the left was just trying to smear Kavanaugh for example...
Where are the people complaining about Kavanaugh now? Has the money dried up funding them perchance?
For the record, if you take the time to look back, you'll find that my opinion was they should have ditched Kananaugh and found somebody else. Irish or not, Kavanaugh should not have been appointed, but it became a no-holds-barred fight to the end just like everything else in our polarized country.
As for the torture thing, where's your evidence that nothing worthwhile came of it? Theories of reliability are just that, theories. Show me the evidence of no results. You can't anymore than I can give you results that it was worthwhile. It seems to me that if it really was so 'worthless', Obama would have made that fact well known. He didn't...
Here's the first 4 articles from a cursory internet search.
I've seen those articles. What they lack is any mention of the times it works. Governments aren't going to brag about the results anymore, if they ever did. I think that if it was totally worthless it would have been discarded long ago. Again, Obama never showed any evidence of its ineffectiveness. Why do you think that is?
Republicans: The Mueller report completely exonerates Trump!
Also Republicans: It's complete garbage, a hyper partisan document and no one should see it and the underlying evidence!
Republicans: The Mueller report completely exonerates Trump!
Also Republicans: It's complete garbage, a hyper partisan document and no one should see it and the underlying evidence!
Evidence that he's a Machiavellian scumbag doesn't mean that he knowingly colluded with Russia. He didn't apologize for his sources though. Shame on him! None of his actions so far really tell me that he's a friend of Putin though. Quite the opposite actually.
Tin-foil hat please. It's only a wacky conspiracy theory if it's on the other side apparently. Bush conspired to blow up the World Trade Center. Bush 'knew' there were no WMD in Iraq even though they had used them on their own people. That's because he's an evil war-monger who wanted to slaughter thousands of innocents. But Pizzagate is total fantasy because it involves somebody on 'my' side. Everybody is so full of shit these days I'm starting to wonder why I bother posting anymore...
Btw - For the record, Pizzagate is BS but so is the fantasy that Bush is a mass-murderer.
Regardless of whether Bush personally knew that the WMD claims were bogus, his administration ran torture camps. That is certainly evil enough for me.
How many lives were saved by the 'torture' (ie: waterboarding) camps? We'll likely never know. I'd need to know that before I dismissed him as 'evil'. It's not possible to quantify lives saved so we'll never know how many people are alive today because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki either, or the Korean War or any other questionable action of government. Sit on your high horse and judge people who have to make real decisions if you like, but don't tell me that they're 'evil'.
Committing heinous acts for some nebulous remotely possible future good is evil, if the word has any meaning at all. If you look at the worst actors in history they were very often those who fell in love with making the "difficult decisions" and "doing what is necessary". This is just more of the same - especially considering that the general ineffectiveness of torture as way of informing reliable information is pretty well documented.
As for "high horse" I would be careful with that, because for someone who claims we shouldn't judge, you do so fairly often. You were pretty quick to judge the left was just trying to smear Kavanaugh for example...
Where are the people complaining about Kavanaugh now? Has the money dried up funding them perchance?
For the record, if you take the time to look back, you'll find that my opinion was they should have ditched Kananaugh and found somebody else. Irish or not, Kavanaugh should not have been appointed, but it became a no-holds-barred fight to the end just like everything else in our polarized country.
As for the torture thing, where's your evidence that nothing worthwhile came of it? Theories of reliability are just that, theories. Show me the evidence of no results. You can't anymore than I can give you results that it was worthwhile. It seems to me that if it really was so 'worthless', Obama would have made that fact well known. He didn't...
Here's the first 4 articles from a cursory internet search.
In addition to that, as well as to the sheer horror and trauma itself, torture generally just leads to more violence instead of saving lives. The jihadists who murdered Nick Berg back in 2004 said it was in direct retaliation for the torture and abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib (and a lot of those prisoners were innocent). And Stanley McChrystal wrote in his memoir that "in my experience, we found that nearly every first-time jihadist claimed Abu Ghraib had first jolted him into action."
People are allowed to have an opinion, those that have a narrative to deceive because their Monarch didn't get chosen should not.
Trump's the biggest liar of them all, he doesn't offer opinions but lies over 10k now probably last I saw was in the 8ks since election. What's his punishment?
He is not going to be punished, he is giving the Golan Heights to Israel. You really think anything is going to stick to him if he keeps giving Israel what they want?
My beef is with those that try to deceive on both sides and the ones that put out the daily narratives to take everyone off the real issues.
Tin-foil hat please. It's only a wacky conspiracy theory if it's on the other side apparently. Bush conspired to blow up the World Trade Center. Bush 'knew' there were no WMD in Iraq even though they had used them on their own people. That's because he's an evil war-monger who wanted to slaughter thousands of innocents. But Pizzagate is total fantasy because it involves somebody on 'my' side. Everybody is so full of shit these days I'm starting to wonder why I bother posting anymore...
Btw - For the record, Pizzagate is BS but so is the fantasy that Bush is a mass-murderer.
Regardless of whether Bush personally knew that the WMD claims were bogus, his administration ran torture camps. That is certainly evil enough for me.
How many lives were saved by the 'torture' (ie: waterboarding) camps? We'll likely never know. I'd need to know that before I dismissed him as 'evil'. It's not possible to quantify lives saved so we'll never know how many people are alive today because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki either, or the Korean War or any other questionable action of government. Sit on your high horse and judge people who have to make real decisions if you like, but don't tell me that they're 'evil'.
Committing heinous acts for some nebulous remotely possible future good is evil, if the word has any meaning at all. If you look at the worst actors in history they were very often those who fell in love with making the "difficult decisions" and "doing what is necessary". This is just more of the same - especially considering that the general ineffectiveness of torture as way of informing reliable information is pretty well documented.
As for "high horse" I would be careful with that, because for someone who claims we shouldn't judge, you do so fairly often. You were pretty quick to judge the left was just trying to smear Kavanaugh for example...
Where are the people complaining about Kavanaugh now? Has the money dried up funding them perchance?
For the record, if you take the time to look back, you'll find that my opinion was they should have ditched Kananaugh and found somebody else. Irish or not, Kavanaugh should not have been appointed, but it became a no-holds-barred fight to the end just like everything else in our polarized country.
As for the torture thing, where's your evidence that nothing worthwhile came of it? Theories of reliability are just that, theories. Show me the evidence of no results. You can't anymore than I can give you results that it was worthwhile. It seems to me that if it really was so 'worthless', Obama would have made that fact well known. He didn't...
Here's the first 4 articles from a cursory internet search.
In addition to that, as well as to the sheer horror and trauma itself, torture generally just leads to more violence instead of saving lives. The jihadists who murdered Nick Berg back in 2004 said it was in direct retaliation for the torture and abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib (and a lot of those prisoners were innocent). And Stanley McChrystal wrote in his memoir that "in my experience, we found that nearly every first-time jihadist claimed Abu Ghraib had first jolted him into action."
Yeah, I'm sure they'd be farming somewhere if it wasn't for Abu Ghraib. Wait, how is it again that they found out about it?
The problem I have with torture is how it hardens the torturers, not sympathy for the tortured necessarily. I don't see how somebody can do that to another human being without becoming a monster. The only way somebody can live with it without bring changed is if something good comes of it. That can't be predicted so in principal I'm not really for it. Logically though I can't argue against the fact that sometimes the ends can justify the means. It's a slippery slope and I'm glad I don't have to make those kinds of decisions.
Saving Private Ryan logic: Every man that's been killed under my leadership saved the lives of how many people? 10, 15, 20, 50 people? That's how I live with my decisions. Simple math...
How else did Truman live with the fact he killed over 100,000 people in a nuclear holocaust? Or Truman/Eisenhower justify the 10's of thousands killed in Korea? The hundreds of thousands killed in Vietnam by Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon? Were they all evil people? Were the generals of WW1 who sent hundreds of thousands to die in trench warfare, evil? Was Grant evil for ignoring the slaughter required to end the Civil War? Was Sherman evil for laying waste to the South in order to end that war earlier?
Better yet, was the average Japanese soldier, or even the average officer, evil for fighting for their country? What about the average German soldier fighting against invaders? Would any of us have thrown down our weapons if we were in that situation? Maybe, probably not though.
People are allowed to have an opinion, those that have a narrative to deceive because their Monarch didn't get chosen should not.
Trump's the biggest liar of them all, he doesn't offer opinions but lies over 10k now probably last I saw was in the 8ks since election. What's his punishment?
He is not going to be punished, he is giving the Golan Heights to Israel. You really think anything is going to stick to him if he keeps giving Israel what they want?
My beef is with those that try to deceive on both sides and the ones that put out the daily narratives to take everyone off the real issues.
What, you mean that afterthought of a story on page 5 of the CNN website? Nothing to see here...
@deltago: I think that depends on how you define "directing a certain narrative." I have little doubt that plenty of people exhibited a partisan bias and allowed it to influence their reporting, even consciously, and I'm sure some people somewhere knowingly misrepresented something. I just don't think it was a coordinated conspiracy kind of a thing, or that it was manufactured.
@Balrog99: I mentioned a while back that a poll found that most Iraqis supported the ousting of Saddam and only opposed the subsequent lengthy occupation. That intern's reading of public opinion is accurate.
@deltago: I think that depends on how you define "directing a certain narrative." I have little doubt that plenty of people exhibited a partisan bias and allowed it to influence their reporting, even consciously, and I'm sure some people somewhere knowingly misrepresented something. I just don't think it was a coordinated conspiracy kind of a thing, or that it was manufactured.
@Balrog99: I mentioned a while back that a poll found that most Iraqis supported the ousting of Saddam and only opposed the subsequent lengthy occupation. That intern's reading of public opinion is accurate.
Well, it was his opinion and that of his fellows so it wasn't wrong from his point of view.
I actually meant to agree with that post, but apparently I misread it and posted something that disagreed with it. I should read more carefully.
I don't think you were wrong. The intern didn't think we occupied for long enough. That was his opinion and might have been in the minority according to the poll you cited.
Yes, the people who murdered Nick Berg would've probably been jihadists anyway. But obviously (according to one of USA's top generals in Iraq) a lot of other people weren't ready to use violence before things like Abu Ghraib pushed them over the edge.
And what @ThacoBell and I have pointed out is that torture just doesn't work. So it isn't even that the end justifies the means - because you probably won't even get the end you want.
You risk causing life-long traumas to people who might very well be innocent, as well as to yourself.
You are much more likely to just get false information (and then act upon that) because people who are being tortured will usually just say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear.
You are giving your enemy the perfect propaganda tool against you, which they can use to recruit others.
So you might save someone's life, but you are far more likely to have caused immense harm and horror for no good reason at all.
The CIA's own internal research found that torture didn't yield actionable information. Your enemies don't become more honest or more informed just because they're in more pain. Eventually, people will just tell their torturers whatever they think will end the torture, and that has no necessary connection to reality.
The sleep deprivation torture was especially foolish, since sleep deprivation actually damages your memory.
This is unreal. 48 hours ago, everyone wanted to see the full report. Bill Barr releases what can best be described as a memo giving his less than 2 day interpretation on a 22-month investigation, and everyone is pretending like he isn't Trump's hand-picked AG and that we have somehow seen anything of actual substance inside of it. Which, of course, is exactly the plan. Plant the narrative with Barr's memo, delay releasing any ACTUAL findings until the story is already set, and the game is over no matter what actual info is revealed. If the report is so goddamn exculpatory, then release it, in full, so the public can digest it. But no, we have the word of the guy who was knee-deep in the Iran-Contra pardons, so no need for that anymore apparently. If the report is what Barr says it is, there is absolutey nothing to fear from releasing it.
He doesn't want to release it. He's a handpicked partisan hack who assisted Trump in his quest to obstruct justice. Trump has broke justice and Barr is a cuck who cheered it on and is begging for more. There's a bunch of people excited about this compromised guy with close ties to Putin. Unreal and unAmerican.
Yes, the people who murdered Nick Berg would've probably been jihadists anyway. But obviously (according to one of USA's top generals in Iraq) a lot of other people weren't ready to use violence before things like Abu Ghraib pushed them over the edge.
And what @ThacoBell and I have pointed out is that torture just doesn't work. So it isn't even that the end justifies the means - because you probably won't even get the end you want.
You risk causing life-long traumas to people who might very well be innocent, as well as to yourself.
You are much more likely to just get false information (and then act upon that) because people who are being tortured will usually just say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear.
You are giving your enemy the perfect propaganda tool against you, which they can use to recruit others.
So you might save someone's life, but you are far more likely to have caused immense harm and horror for no good reason at all.
Terrorism doesnt work either. Not anymore anyway. That doesn't stop people from believing it does. What good did it do those 'freedom fighters', or rather 'brainwashed religious fanatics'? What has terrorism accomplished in the last 30 years except getting themselves slaughtered 10-20 to one (if not worse)? How long did the 'Caliphate' last? Remember all those western idiots buying into it? How did that turn out for them? All those stupid women going off to marry the very-same jackasses that hid behind them in the end. Cowards who hide behind women and children because they know we value them far more than they do. Bloody cowards who behead defenseless people but hide behind human shields when the piper calls. Yeah, let's mourn for them...
@Balrog99: We don't have anyone in this thread defending terrorists (that would be very against the Site Rules, of course), so that point isn't really relevant to the torture argument.
The reason the jihadi ideology exists after completely failing to accomplish anything for decades on end is because the Saudis are financing jihadi schools and promoting the ideology through sheer force of money. Without that, financial support, Islamic terrorism would be more or less dead.
No, @semiticgod lack of education is why it exists. No amount of money could make me join their cause. Ignorance, fear, greed and envy are the real enemy. Those are the reasons behind most of mankind's misery in my opinion. There's plenty to go around for all, but how do we make it work? The most miserable people are led by the worst rulers. Trump isn't even close to as bad as most of the rulers in Africa, the Middle East and South America.
The argument against torture is the same argument against the death penalty. Inevitably, it is going to be used against someone who is completely innocent. Do you have any idea how many people we just rounded up on nothing but the word of Afghani warlords and shipped off to a black-sites??
The argument against torture is the same argument against the death penalty. Inevitably, it is going to be used against someone who is completely innocent. Do you have any idea how many people we just rounded up on nothing but the word of Afghani warlords and shipped off to a black-sites??
Nearly a year before his letter Sunday telling lawmakers he did not believe President Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice, Attorney General William Barr authored a memo saying he thought the obstruction investigation was "fatally misconceived."
This is why Trump fired Sessions and picked Barr. This is a American con-job.
He doesn't want to release it. He's a handpicked partisan hack who assisted Trump in his quest to obstruct justice. Trump has broke justice and Barr is a cuck who cheered it on and is begging for more. There's a bunch of people excited about this compromised guy with close ties to Putin. Unreal and unAmerican.
I will say this and no more on my end, unless it's funny in my opinion, about the Russian Collusion Conspiracy.
"The Left leaning media put all their eggs into one basket. Then proceeded to call the basket a racist bigoted nazi for assuming the gender identity of the eggs."
Not mine but I like it in a millennial kind of way.
He doesn't want to release it. He's a handpicked partisan hack who assisted Trump in his quest to obstruct justice. Trump has broke justice and Barr is a cuck who cheered it on and is begging for more. There's a bunch of people excited about this compromised guy with close ties to Putin. Unreal and unAmerican.
I will say this and no more on my end, unless it's funny in my opinion, about the Russian Collusion Conspiracy.
"The Left leaning media put all their eggs into one basket. Then proceeded to call the basket a racist bigoted nazi for assuming the gender identity of the eggs."
Not mine but I like it in a millennial kind of way.
It's factually wrong since there are still several more criminal investigation so there's that to laugh at as well.
Comments
Losing the next election hopefully. Choose the opponent wisely...
You must not watch CNN much...
According to most people who make this claim, neither do they, so where is a basis this is coming from?
I’ll sit here and wait for someone that posts me a link from CNN news clearly stating Trump had broken a law without also stating a reason on how he didn’t break a law.
I will wait for someone to post something that says Trump conspired with Russia because this happened in a news article as well.
I've seen those articles. What they lack is any mention of the times it works. Governments aren't going to brag about the results anymore, if they ever did. I think that if it was totally worthless it would have been discarded long ago. Again, Obama never showed any evidence of its ineffectiveness. Why do you think that is?
Also Republicans: It's complete garbage, a hyper partisan document and no one should see it and the underlying evidence!
Evidence that he's a Machiavellian scumbag doesn't mean that he knowingly colluded with Russia. He didn't apologize for his sources though. Shame on him! None of his actions so far really tell me that he's a friend of Putin though. Quite the opposite actually.
In addition to that, as well as to the sheer horror and trauma itself, torture generally just leads to more violence instead of saving lives. The jihadists who murdered Nick Berg back in 2004 said it was in direct retaliation for the torture and abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib (and a lot of those prisoners were innocent). And Stanley McChrystal wrote in his memoir that "in my experience, we found that nearly every first-time jihadist claimed Abu Ghraib had first jolted him into action."
He is not going to be punished, he is giving the Golan Heights to Israel. You really think anything is going to stick to him if he keeps giving Israel what they want?
My beef is with those that try to deceive on both sides and the ones that put out the daily narratives to take everyone off the real issues.
Yeah, I'm sure they'd be farming somewhere if it wasn't for Abu Ghraib. Wait, how is it again that they found out about it?
The problem I have with torture is how it hardens the torturers, not sympathy for the tortured necessarily. I don't see how somebody can do that to another human being without becoming a monster. The only way somebody can live with it without bring changed is if something good comes of it. That can't be predicted so in principal I'm not really for it. Logically though I can't argue against the fact that sometimes the ends can justify the means. It's a slippery slope and I'm glad I don't have to make those kinds of decisions.
How else did Truman live with the fact he killed over 100,000 people in a nuclear holocaust? Or Truman/Eisenhower justify the 10's of thousands killed in Korea? The hundreds of thousands killed in Vietnam by Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon? Were they all evil people? Were the generals of WW1 who sent hundreds of thousands to die in trench warfare, evil? Was Grant evil for ignoring the slaughter required to end the Civil War? Was Sherman evil for laying waste to the South in order to end that war earlier?
Better yet, was the average Japanese soldier, or even the average officer, evil for fighting for their country? What about the average German soldier fighting against invaders? Would any of us have thrown down our weapons if we were in that situation? Maybe, probably not though.
What, you mean that afterthought of a story on page 5 of the CNN website? Nothing to see here...
@Balrog99: I mentioned a while back that a poll found that most Iraqis supported the ousting of Saddam and only opposed the subsequent lengthy occupation. That intern's reading of public opinion is accurate.
Well, it was his opinion and that of his fellows so it wasn't wrong from his point of view.
I don't think you were wrong. The intern didn't think we occupied for long enough. That was his opinion and might have been in the minority according to the poll you cited.
And what @ThacoBell and I have pointed out is that torture just doesn't work. So it isn't even that the end justifies the means - because you probably won't even get the end you want.
So you might save someone's life, but you are far more likely to have caused immense harm and horror for no good reason at all.
The sleep deprivation torture was especially foolish, since sleep deprivation actually damages your memory.
Terrorism doesnt work either. Not anymore anyway. That doesn't stop people from believing it does. What good did it do those 'freedom fighters', or rather 'brainwashed religious fanatics'? What has terrorism accomplished in the last 30 years except getting themselves slaughtered 10-20 to one (if not worse)? How long did the 'Caliphate' last? Remember all those western idiots buying into it? How did that turn out for them? All those stupid women going off to marry the very-same jackasses that hid behind them in the end. Cowards who hide behind women and children because they know we value them far more than they do. Bloody cowards who behead defenseless people but hide behind human shields when the piper calls. Yeah, let's mourn for them...
The reason the jihadi ideology exists after completely failing to accomplish anything for decades on end is because the Saudis are financing jihadi schools and promoting the ideology through sheer force of money. Without that, financial support, Islamic terrorism would be more or less dead.
No, do you?
I mean, if we actually had research that showed it worked, then we could weigh the bad against the good. We don't.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/us/politics/amid-details-on-torture-data-on-26-held-in-error-.html
This is why Trump fired Sessions and picked Barr. This is a American con-job.
I will say this and no more on my end, unless it's funny in my opinion, about the Russian Collusion Conspiracy.
"The Left leaning media put all their eggs into one basket. Then proceeded to call the basket a racist bigoted nazi for assuming the gender identity of the eggs."
Not mine but I like it in a millennial kind of way.
It's factually wrong since there are still several more criminal investigation so there's that to laugh at as well.