'Damn right' I personally ordered waterboarding: Bush

Originally posted by Bunken Drum
reply to post by NOTurTypical

 

"IF" means something. In hindsight was [waterboarding] a good idea? No, never argued it was. But at the time the decision was made, it probably seemed necessary to potentially save lives. And that's something I'm always in favor of.

Ok, another RL analogy. IDK what you look like, but I'm going with "average Jo/sephin/e" for the purposes of discussion. I'm a bit scary looking. I could do more to help that, but it makes the type of person who judges a book by its cover take themselves away from me, before I have to ask them to. In truth, for reasons I've alluded to above, I am capable of being dangerous, but I'm a man of peace, as it were. Still, since most of us are very un-self-aware, there are people who react to me as follows: they are scared; unconsciously, b/c they dont know why, & cant admit it to their insecure selves, they defend their fear with anger. They then get in my face about any old random thing that presents itself. This has led to me being attacked.
If I came to the USA, I'd know that many people there carry guns. If you & I were approaching each other, b/c of my previous experience of life, If you reached into a pocket, it'd be reasonable for me to assume that you could be about to pull a gun on me. @that time, I would have to make a decision that probably would seem necessary to potentially save my life. Are you "always in favour" of me delivering a 270 degree, full aerial, spinning back kick, with locked knee & landing my heel only, on the side of your neck (Think Chuck Norris & then think again - this maneuver could kill you outright, might leave you a quadraplegic, but would definitely end any threat from you (& put you in hospital) &, since just trying to knock you out might not work, leaving you able to shoot me, it'd be my best option, violence wise.)? Or should I consider my morals, deal with my fear & say, "Whoa, dude/tte!"?

If you thought your life was in danger by my body language or threats I made you'd be acting normal out of self-preservation. Remember, Darwin was right, we're animals and it's survival of the fittest!

Originally posted by sbc650mike
reply to post by NOTurTypical

 

In the end it's our responsibility to check the facts and make the right decision. We KNOW North Korea has nukes, and they make threats and we do nothing. I don't want to go to war, but we went to war with no proof in Iraq, so what gives?

We're hard pressed to go to war with North Korea because of their nukes and our 100,000 or so military personnel stationed in South Korea. Comparing Iraq and North Korea is comparing apples to oranges.

reply to post by mrsdudaraI'm going to answer you in 1 post/issue:

I have been the victim of torture. Sure it was a domestic violence situation

I'm not about to belittle the trauma of domestic violence. I grew up getting regularly badly beaten, seeing it happen to my mum & both of us living in fear of more. My mum got divorced in the end. I was 11 & had started martial arts training to try to do something about it. Couple of years later, my dad saw me in a partial-contact competition take down men bigger & faster than him. Obviously, in such a competition, I wasn't actually trying to hurt anyone. I got home from school 1day to find him back round ours shouting @my mum. I offered him the back yard. He made his excuses & left.
A few months later, my mum remarried. He turned out to be a violent prick too, but he also went after my sisters. It took 3 fights, 2-1 to me, before he ended up in hospital with the realisation that a 4th would leave 1 of us dead.
Was this right? I have had no relationship with my father since then. B/c of the untenable situation when my step-dad came out of hospital, I had to leave my mum's @15. I dont know what my mum did/said, but my sister's would say, "Leave me alone or I'll tell our [my name]!" Apparently this stopped the beatings. Instead, the emotional cruelty increased. I got to find it so upsetting going round there that I left that town @16&1/2 b/c I knew my mum wouldn't thank me for battering my step-dad again & I couldn't stand to see her having lost what she'd had for 2yrs: independence. I've had almost no relationship with my sisters in early adulthood. Its only in the last 15yrs that we've gradually become good friends. My mum & I are cordial @best. She finally divorced that prick too; her bloke now is ok-ish.
There were other options. I just couldn't see them @the time. I was a child whom had been brought up to think violence is the only answer to violence. I regret that.

c'mon...no president is going down for what he did, unless it involves a sexual act. they just elected a majority in the house of MORE republicans, the people that got us into this mess in the first place. the american people are stupid, and naive, and that has worked out quite well for the wealthy. no more wall street regulations, no more help for the middle class or poor, no more restrictions on oil companies or other businesses. the investor class is getting richer while the rest of us will pay for it through higher energy and food costs. and forget about medical coverage, the ranks of the uninsured will continue to grow, because the house now holds the purse strings for funding, and the republicans are NOT going to fund medical care for the masses, it's only for the people that are paid enough to be able to afford it.

Originally posted by Logarock
In the case of Mr Bush it is facinating, even if one believes waterboarding is a bad thing to do, that Bush would be so hated for this and yet Saddam is a well known mass killer.

It doesn’t matter if “one believes waterboarding is a bad thing to do” or not, what matters is what the law says. People, including Bush, may think whatever they wish about waterboarding but that doesn’t change the law. The ban on torture isn’t a matter of domestic law or policy, it’s international law and we, the United States, signed several treaties committing ourselves not to do it and punish those who did.

The same calling for justice on Bush wish to defend the rights of Saddam and Iraq as a sovereign leader and state.

You are attacking a strawman, sir. No one said Saddam was a legitimate leader, and the sovereignty of Iraq isn’t a matter of opinion it’s fact. The international community repudiated Saddam’s actions and criticized the way he kept himself in power.

I know this is hard for some people because, unfortunately, they can’t separate their emotions from reasoning, but even Saddam — a dictator and guilty of several crimes against humanity — has rights. So does former Pres. Bush. And that is why I, and others, have been calling for the law to be followed and punish the guilty accordingly, something former Pres. Bush didn’t, apparently, care about when he ordered torture, extraordinary rendition and suspended habeas corpus.

reply to post by mrsdudara

I personally believe we all have what it takes to be a psychopath. We all have our breaking point.

IDK but it sounds like you're confusing "psychopath" with "psychotic". The former is a long standing mental condition which leads to a pronounced lack of empathy, so the only thing stopping such a person from doing whatever takes their fancy to another is the fear of being caught & punished. The latter is when we temporarily lose our reason, or reach our "breaking point", where we do things without thinking of the consequences b/c we are emotionally overwhelmed, seriously intoxicated &/or suffering from a clinically delusional mental state.
If you or I were psychopaths, we would have not simply plotted how to kill our abusers & get away with it, we would have done it. Now IDK, maybe you have killed someone in a psychotic episode, but I've read your posts elsewhere on ATS & you show far too much insight into human emotion to be a psychopath. So I'm sticking with my original position: you may well feel outraged by the actions KSM is alleged to have perpetrated, but, when it came right down to it, even if you were mad as hell & started to hurt him, you wouldn't be able to stomach prolonged torture.
Ask yourself this: you've suffered horrible violence, right? Have you ever in your life hit someone hard enough to break bones? If so, under what circumstances?
For myself, I can tell you that, whilst fighting my step-dad, I was borderline if not actually psychotic, which is why I could easily have killed him if it carried on, but not in cold blood.

reply to post by mrsdudara

As for this man being innocent. PLEASE!!! Do you really thing that they just plucked an innocent fella off the street or something?

Well, I'm going to guess you've never been arrested for something you didn't do, right? Well I have. The police used trumped up charges & abused their powers under the Police & Criminal Evidence Act to keep me locked up in the station, with no clothes except a paper boilersuit, in a cold cell, barely enough to eat & deprived of some medication that I needed @the time, plus my only drinks were strong tea, so between the caffeine & being woken deliberately, I hardly had any sleep. Why? They didn't like something I was doing which they couldn't legally stop.
A friend of mine was charged with Attempted Murder of a Police Officer for similar reasons. How do I know it was bunk? I was there & went to the court sessions. I personally saw them kick the crap out of him during the arrest, even tho he offered no resistance & then heard them lie through their teeth about it in court. This court appearance was after about 9months remanded in custody.
The jury were lapping it up. I expect they thought, "Do you really thing that they just plucked an innocent fella off the street or something?" It wasn't until my mate finally persuaded his barrister to allow the scary looking supposed weapon, with which he had allegedly chased a copper down the street murderously, into court for the jury to see & they discovered that it was an electric power tool so heavy that the clerk to the court could hardly carry it & that, furthermore it required a 110V transformer to operate that the clerk had to carry in seperately, that it became clear that the police were lying out of their arses. Nonetheless, the prosecution didn't give up. They tried to convince the jury that nonexistant extension cable could've been used!
Perhaps they should've saved time & money & just waterboarded us?

Originally posted by DuceizBack
He admits to "war crimes" and you guys don't march?
Lol...the USA could admit they put arson in your water and you wouldn't do anything but cry to ATS about it.

It wasn't a war crime folks. Bush was completely within the law.

reply to post by SubmarinesLogic Failure Alert

So you are saying its OK for the terrorists to do what ever they want, and we should be nice to them and ask those that we have in prison for their help. So then they can excersise their 5th ammendment privilage.

This post attempts to imply that if we criticise something that is wrong, we must be in favour of that which it was perpetrated against. Its typical dualistic thinking & a classic logical fallacy. Are there only 2 positions that can be taken on any subject? No. Clearly we can deplore the actions of terrorists & torturors alike.
Whats more, its pretty pathetic b/c nobody in the thread (upto this post where I'm now reading) has even attempted to claim that the alleged actions of the people who have been waterboarded are justifiable. The consensus amongst those who are opposed to the practice appears to be "2 wrongs dont make a right."

And what exactly is the problem here. Bush is dammed if he does and dammed if he does not. I guess what this stands on, is, can we believe Bush this time?

I am hard pressed to imagine why he would say this if it was plainly untruth.

And this is what we elect our leaders to do. To make hard and differcult decisions that we do not want to make so we elect someone to make them on our behalf, and if any of you, believe that the leader of your country has not made decisions to authorise the use of torture to ensure the security and safety of your country, WAKE UP.

reply to post by Violater1

Justice to be served??
Like the justice for the [bla bla bla]

Here we have a person who has clearly failed to grasp the difference between justice & revenge.
The rest of the post is pure ad hom against the OP, so I'll not repost it, nor blast it out of the water. I feel sure the OP is quite capable, should he choose. What I will say, since this person's MO is ad hom, is that its a very curious fact that those of his mindset make more typos & grammatical errors than the rest of us (click the link to the post if you dont believe me). Hmmm... Does this mean that borderline dyslexia is linked to gingoism? Or is a lack of having read enough books to be comfortably fluent in written English the problem? Perhaps its just laziness? Maybe its stupidity?

Originally posted by Freedom ERP
And this is what we elect our leaders to do. To make hard and differcult decisions ...

I would add a few words to your statement:

“And this is what we elect our leaders to do. To make hard and difficult decisions while following the law and the Constitution that they swore to do.”

Or are you indifferent on whether they follow the law or not?

reply to post by Freedom ERP

And what exactly is the problem here. Bush is dammed if he does and dammed if he does not.

When you don't do things the way they are supposed to be done, then you are "dammed if you don't". If you do do things that you shouldn't be doing, then you are "dammed if you do". This is why Bush is "dammed if he doesn't and dammed if he does". That's not too hard to understand, now is it? That goes for just about everyone and everything in life. If you don't screw people over, don't break the rules and aren't [caught being] dishonest, then you need not worry in the first place.

I guess what this stands on, is, can we believe Bush this time?

You're right, can we really trust a word he says, after all he lied to us over and over again. However, there is evidence to suggest that POWs and other detainees were tortured, to include water boarding. For this reason, and because there is evidence, I believe him when he says it. It's something that almost everyone knew already anyway. Put it this way, when a child molester lies through his teeth with just about everything, then he admits to fondling a little boy, do you believe him?

I am hard pressed to imagine why he would say this if it was plainly untruth.

Bush has said a lot of things that were inherently false (as with a lot of politicians). Knowing this, I'm not hard pressed to imagine why he would lie about anything. With that being said, I have no doubts that there is motive in his admission, or at the very least, confidence. Maybe he wants to draw the heat away from something else and by admitting this, people may think that he is coming clean, thus this was the magnitude of his nefarious actions. If I had to put money on it, I would think that this is just a tactic to gain credibility for the rest of the non-sense that is in his book. It is something that most people already knew in the first place and with our elite class or aristocracy being above the law, it wouldn't really be that big of a forfeiture.

And this is what we elect our leaders to do. To make hard and difficult decisions that we do not want to make so we elect someone to make them on our behalf, and if any of you, believe that the leader of your country has not made decisions to authorize the use of torture to ensure the security and safety of your country, WAKE UP.

You have that wrong, as that is what we have been indoctrinated to believe. Our elected officials are elected to represent us. In a despotic, dictatorship, certain monarchies and other non-democratic or non-republican governments, the leaders make decisions for their subjects, as the leaders are often seen as "knowing better" than their respective subjects. However, in a democracy, republic or democratic-republic and according to our Constitution, our elected leaders are supposed to que from the public, not for the public. They merely represent us, nothing more. The American government is supposed to be one of, by and for the people, not over or in place of the people. We don't elect them to make decisions for us, at least according to the Constitution and charter of this country, rather we elect them to represent our decisions.

Through greed and tyranny, that has been lost recently along the way. Nefarious influences have steered us away from that very important principal. After all, it is dictators, kings and emperors who make decisions for their people. We have tried those types of government and found that they would always lead to tyranny. In fact, our founding fathers risked everything and our ancestors sacrificed so much to give us a system where the government does not make decisions for or in spite of the people. Once Americans realize that the government is supposed to be working for us, not the other way around, then we can once again strive for liberty, freedom and justice. As long as we think that governments make the decisions that we don't to, we are failing at the responsibility that was handed down to us, to maintain freedom for the generations that follow ours.

You see, tyranny will always be applying pressure and unless we constantly keep up our guard and maintain a certain standard, tyranny will envelop our lives. You can make the analogy of a river dam. Tyranny is the water being held back by the dam, constantly applying pressure to that dam. The dam itself is our Constitution and the system that our founding fathers built for us. If we don't maintain that dam -to spec-, it will com crashing down. If we even so much as allow a tiny little crack in that dam, tyranny will force its way through and flood the land below (us).

Right now, we have failed to maintain the strict specs in our Constitution and we have even allowed the tyranny (water) to dismantle huge sections of our dam (Constitution). We are being tricked into believing that the water on the other side of the dam has all dissipated, thus the dam is only burdening us, as opposed to protecting us.

Tyranny will always be there and if it isn't the current tyranny staring us in the face, it would be someone or something else. The people of this world will always need to stay vigilant, as there is no such thing as stamping tyranny out. We need never forget or ignore the specifications, sacrifices and lessons set up before us by our founding fathers, lest we find ourselves losing what they have given us... freedom. Their message is always relevant and will always be relevant.

We are the generation that failed. "Generation Fail". True, the few generations before us also failed at the responsibilities handed down to them by our founding fathers, but that gives us no excuse to maintain their failure. I have no doubts in my mind that eventually, school-children will be learning about how our generation was the biggest failure and that we couldn't even live up to a simple responsibility to maintain what our founding fathers and generations before us left to us, so that the generations after us could enjoy the gift of freedom. Again, we are the ones who dropped the ball and it is only us to blame. May our grandchildren have mercy on our soles and spit on our graves.



--airspoon

reply to post by NOTurTypical

Actually, I got your opinion the last time. You've presented a moot point, the person's perception doesn't change reality. In reality, the person will not die or be harmed.

Well, if the person's perception doesn't matter, only your alleged reality that they will not be harmed, then, unless we are to assume that they are morons who cannot work this out for themselves, there's no point in doing it then, is there? Where's the threat? Er... oh yeah, its from the fact that being constantly tormented, whether it leaves physical scars on your body or not drives you nuts. Ever had a bad toothache?

Hey, being driven nuts isn't harm tho, right? Some DC lawyers wrote a memo saying it isn't, so that must be right. Amazing then that people would spend the time, effort & money on a whole branch of medical science devoted to nothing but the harm that having been driven nuts causes, isn't it?
Do you think there might be a conspiracy in there somewhere?
Oh come on ATSers! Its obvious. The entire concept of post traumatic stress disorder was created in advance by liberal tree huggers, just so that when a POS like Bush Jnr. ordered people to be tortured without leaving physical scars, everyone would have an entirely ficticious "harm" to point to, for no other reason than to criticise The Shrub.

Did someone really try to make the argument that water boarding is okay or not so bad because it doesn;t leave physical scars? If they did, I must have missed it, as I would have surely laughed. First of all, it isn;t true that water-boarding doesn't have any lasting effects, as it can kill and it can even break bones. However, that is not even the main point here.

So, as long as a practice doesn't leave physical damage, it should be okay? Can we then start raping people? Should rape be allowed? Forcing sex on someone or raping them doesn't leave scars or any lasting physical issues (in most cases). Does anyone advocate raping their neighbors? Is it not okay too, since it doesn;t leave any physical damage? Would you mind your mother raped or maybe your sister or daughter? What if they were accused of a crime?


--airspoon

reply to post by Freedom ERP

And what exactly is the problem here. Bush is dammed if he does and dammed if he does not.

The problem here is that Bush Jnr. is a damned liar who ordered some other damned liars to produce a damned document full of damned lies to justify damned criminal behaviour. The fact is that the USA was & remains a signatory to the UN Convention on Torture, which requires all signatories to enact domestic law to forbid damned torture.
If the damned POTUS wants to change the USAs damned position on a previously ratified international agreement, he ought to damned well say so & take it the the damned Congress to see if the damned government of the people, by the people & for the people damned well agree with his damned decision. Damn it!

Originally posted by aptness

Originally posted by Logarock
In the case of Mr Bush it is facinating, even if one believes waterboarding is a bad thing to do, that Bush would be so hated for this and yet Saddam is a well known mass killer.

It doesn’t matter if “one believes waterboarding is a bad thing to do” or not, what matters is what the law says. People, including Bush, may think whatever they wish about waterboarding but that doesn’t change the law. The ban on torture isn’t a matter of domestic law or policy, it’s international law and we, the United States, signed several treaties committing ourselves not to do it and punish those who did.

The same calling for justice on Bush wish to defend the rights of Saddam and Iraq as a sovereign leader and state.

You are attacking a strawman, sir. No one said Saddam was a legitimate leader, and the sovereignty of Iraq isn’t a matter of opinion it’s fact. The international community repudiated Saddam’s actions and criticized the way he kept himself in power.

I know this is hard for some people because, unfortunately, they can’t separate their emotions from reasoning, but even Saddam — a dictator and guilty of several crimes against humanity — has rights. So does former Pres. Bush. And that is why I, and others, have been calling for the law to be followed and punish the guilty accordingly, something former Pres. Bush didn’t, apparently, care about when he ordered torture, extraordinary rendition and suspended habeas corpus.

edit on 6-11-2010 by aptness because: (no reason given)

Lol. Like you are not running off with emotional zeel for the "law" here.

The SC ruled what in June 12, 2008 that POW were to be granted habeas corpus. That was after Bush left office so what has Obama done about it? Well the problem was the issue of "unlawfull combatant" not being POWs.

Even the foes of the US dont want Bush brought up for this on an international stage because then they would have some much more to answer to themselves.

You are attacking a strawman, sir. No one said Saddam was a legitimate leader, and the sovereignty of Iraq isn’t a matter of opinion it’s fact. The international community repudiated Saddam’s actions and criticized the way he kept himself in power

No this idea is put out every time someone says we had no right to attack Saddam. You can find it everywhere on may threads over the years.

You are so into the law and giving folks the idea that Bush just screwed the heck out of the law and everything under the sun but the truth is that not only is waterboarding not mentioned and hard to apply to the weak leagal language of international law on this subject.

Anyway speaking in a pure legal way....there was little anyone could do to Bush. Obama didnt strike its use for one full year after being in office!

reply to post by airspoon

Did someone really try to make the argument that water boarding is okay or not so bad because it doesn;t leave physical scars?

I was paraphrasing. There's been plenty of people trying to justify waterboarding on the grounds that its not maiming, which would leave physical scars. I agree with you, its a horrendous practice.
Like I've said above, I am a man of peace, but, if push comes to shove, I wont back down if violence is the only way I can see to end immediate wrongdoing. So, if I happened on people waterboarding somebody, there'd be trouble if they didn't desist. Am I going to cold bloodedly seek these people out & harm them? No.
I pay my dues to AI, add my £0.02 to email & letter campaigns they suggest are worth having a go at, & occasionally, when I get really incensed by something & think it may be effective b/c the target is vulnerable, mount my own "guerilla action".
I wish I could do more. I've got a past that wouldn't stand the media scrutiny if I tried to get into politics... Hey ho, you do what you can, right?

reply to post by NOTurTypical

If I had reason to believe I could potentially save thousands of lives by waterboarding a terrorist then I'd do it. And not apologize for it. Even to save one single life I'd do it.

I'd be interested to know what reasons you speculate you would have to believe that waterboarding might possibly save someone's life? I feel pretty certain that whatever those potential reasons may be, they have already been proven worthless by other members, but hey ho, if not, I may learn something.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

If you're wife and children were kidnapped and you had the person responsible in your kitchen tied up to a chair and knew they'd be killed by lets say a bomb on a timer in the next 1 hour. Would you agree to waterboard the kidnapper to try and make him tell you where your family was being imprisoned with the bomb?

Or would you just hope he had a change of heart and decided to tell you the location on his own?

Personally, if I had the resources of the CIA, I'd inject the suspect with a combination of atropine + scopolamine, morphine, harmine + harmaline, psilocine + psilocybin/'___'25 &, within 15mins they'd be telling me anything I wanted to know. The reason is b/c these chemicals are mutual antagonists but also act in opposite fashion physically, so a much higher dose of each can be dealt with by the body without causing death, but the mind would become an open book to anyone who undertood even basic psychology. The beauty of this combination is that it is also very pleasurable, but in an extremely bizarre way, so the subject would be very relaxed & open to suggestion. However, the ability of the body to tolerate a high dose of scopolamine & atropine in this mixture would also mean that the subject would have only fragmentary memories of the experience thereafter.
Still, life isn't an episode of 24, as others have pointed out.
If it were the case that you only had 1hr to get the info, then, by the time you'd gotten it by waterboarding the captive (since obviously they'd tell you any pack of lies which would each have to be investigated), it'd be too late.
Again: logical fallacy. Its called reductio ad absurdam. Its a good tool for unstructured internet debates, b/c, unless somebody who knows about logic steps in, it'll usually fly.
Just who were that American band that sang "Going down in a blaze of glory."? Never liked that kind of thing myself, so I cant remember.