We need to move away from torture. This OpEd written by an interrogator in Iraq is really amazing. Here are some of the more important parts. So while torture didn't work, moving away from torture and using rapport building did. Sadly torture has not saved the lives of soldiers but cost them their lives. I would be deeply ashamed if I had ever supported water boarding or other torture methods used. Supporting those methods certainly wasn't supporting our troops. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242_2.html This article only highlights what many of us knew. It's just ashamed that some Americans respond to their gut feeling of anger and try to rationalize torturing others rather than to actually look at what's effective and hold on to the principles our nation has always espoused.
Unfortunately, evidence that non turture has been more succesful than torture is always ignored by the Bush admin and it's devout followers like basso and T_J. For somebody who accuses other people of wanting to lose the war all the time, I wonder why basso wanted to make things worse on US troops by supporting torture and causing foreign fighters to come pouring into Iraq and kill more of our soldiers? Why does he ignore the fact that non turture techniques lead to much more valuable intelligence?
I think there is a primal urge to want to see bad guys hurt and suffer. On some gut level it might feel good to some people to think of terrorists being tortured. They only use the pseudo rationale that it gives us information and helps us to rationalize their more base instincts.
The thing about that is that despite the title of this section of Clutch bbs they don't seem willing to engage in debate or discussion most of the time.
