So, being the good guys means we can torture?

[struggle4progress]

Maybe this notion of moral relativism is just a bit too abstract for me. I struggled through the single philosophy class I took in college.
<snip>

We cannot torture people to death, although there's a distinct possibility that we already have.
<snip>

How do we know they are terrorists or enemy combatants? Well, they are until the people holding them say they aren't.
<snip>

The problem: The memos don't sound like flukes. They sound very much like a bunch of government lawyers getting together, scouring to find loopholes allowing abuse and torture.
<snip>

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/0615pimentel15.html

[mike_c]

1. I think they are exactly that--

...pitiful attempts to warp moral and legal principles to fit an evil intent. Everyone involved in this attempt should be disbarred, fired, prosecuted, courts martialed, or imprisoned, as their depth of complicity merits. None of them should ever be able to look back at the Bush presidency as just another career glitch.

[Eric J in MN]

2. Electircal shocks, among the tortures the US is using.

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/international/middleeast/14ABUS.html...

Two detainees reported having been given electric shocks at other holding facilities before arriving in Abu Ghraib, according to the interviews. One prisoner's file included photographs of burns on his body. "We didn't want people to know that we knew about it and didn't report it," the soldier said.

[struggle4progress]

3. I don't want a few soldiers to be scape-goats here. This goes to the top.

[Eric J in MN]

5. I agree. There are a lot of people responsible, including

I agree. There are a lot of people responsible, including the Justice Dept. attorneys who claimed that the President is above the law in all war-related matters.

[In Sha Allah]

4. This goes to the bottom, too.

No matter where you live in this wonderful country you are within an hour's drive of a prison, and all of this shit and more is going on there. What I don't understand is why it's such a crime when Americans beat, rape, humiliate, torture, and murder Iraqis...but doing those things to other Americans are ticketyboo.

[oldcoot]

6. The photographs probably influence our perceptions

In the United States, many of us make the assumption that our legal system is almost perfect or that it is too lenient, allowing too many bad guys to escape justice. Many Americans also tend to believe that most inmates are prison because they committed horrible violent crimes (and ignore the fact that many are in prison for nonviolent drug-related crimes). We also tend not to believe defendants or prison inmates when they claim that they were framed by the police or were mistreated in prison. We assume they are lying and trying to get out of prison.


However, it is impossible to deny what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq (even though some Republican senators have tried) because we have all seen the pictures. The fact that many of the men is these pictures are naked probably contributes greatly to the shock value.

The fact that some of the individuals who were accused of torture in Iraq were prison guards in the U.S. will hopefully cause some Americans to question what happens in American prisons. As you probably know, Amnesty International monitors and reports on the treatment of prisoners in U.S. prisons.

[tom_paine]

7. Imperial Amerika is NOT the Good Guys.

Sure, don't we all wish we could go back to the Days of the Old Republic, when at least some of the time, we WERE.

But those days are gone, perhaps never to return...

[young_at_heart]

8. To Bush, good guys need to torture to get the "truth"

I don't think they see it as torture, but the onward (secret) struggle to put forward the American image of the Bush dynasty's version of democracy and hoping the world sees us as "The Good Guys"!