What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread!
Here’s a couple to start off.
1. This first one I offer for your consideration with no comment.
From TheFederalist “Yes, Christians Can Support Torture”
“Majorities of Christians support the use of torture in some instances. And they’re not bad Christians for doing so.”
“In a recent post cited by Patheos, nondenominational pastor Brian Zahnd brashly proclaims “You Cannot Be Christian and Support Torture.”
There is no possibility of compromise. The support of torture is off the table for a Christian. I suppose you can be some version of a ‘patriot’ and support the use of torture, but you cannot be any version of Christian and support torture. So choose one: A torture-endorsing patriot or a Jesus-following Christian. But don’t lie to yourself that you can be both. You cannot.
…Any thoughtful person, no matter their religion or non-religion, knows that you cannot support torturing people and still claim to be a follower of the one who commanded his disciples to love their enemies. The only way around this is to invent a false Jesus who supports the use of torture.”
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2. Shouldn’t liberals be crying about “separation of church and state?” Oh that’s right, they only do that when it’s conservative types proposing the “faith-based initiatives.” Since it’s the Obama admin, he gets a pass because they know he doesn’t really believe all that stuff and this is just a means to an end.
FromCNSNews “Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell met with “faith organizations from across the country” last week to ask them to help people enroll in federal health care insurance plans created through the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
“We know that the most effective voices on helping folks learn about the Affordable Care Act are voices in their community and voices that they trust,” Burwell said to reporters following the “closed press” meeting on Friday.”
“While addressing reporters, Burwell was flanked by two people who attended the meeting: Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, National Catholic Social Justice Lobby and Amy Cotton, senior policy manager at the National Council of Jewish Women.
Campbell supported liberal causes, including the reelection of President Barack Obama. In September, Campbell and other nun activists did their third tour to fight what they say is “dark money” from Charles and David Koch to GOP political campaigns.
According to its website, Cotton’s organization takes “a progressive stance on such issues as child welfare, women’s rights, and reproductive freedom.”
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Wandering Views 
Was torture used positively in Scripture?
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Other than Jesus dying on the cross?
It defies
Imago Deo.
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They caught a guy who was part of the Boku Haran group that captured the Nigerian girls. He knows where they are, but they can’t get him to talk because they don’t want to violate his human dignity
They captured an al Quaid guy who knew they were going to kill 140 Pakistani children. But couldn’t get him to tell without violating his human dignity.
I know I misspelled some of that. And I also made it up. But the scenario is valid.
What would I do.?
These people are evil. I care not a bit abut their human dignity.
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I can think of no instances of torture in scripture, other than bashing children’s heads against the rocks. Stoning is not an easy way to die, but Muslims wouldn’t call it torture. They still practice it.
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Define torture.
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I have tried not to read the gruesome details by avoiding articles about the torture, but a Facebook friend who is a very knowledgeable guy & has read a lot on this subject has quoted enough & written enough about it that I am sickened by it.
Just some snippets of what I’ve read…
People made to stand on broken limbs, often with their hands chained above their heads.
Sleep deprivation up to 180 hours.
Food forced into the rectum through pipes or hoses (also known as anal rape).
The waterboarding was more like near-drowning, with copious amounts of water getting into their lungs & stomachs.
A mentally-challenged man, known to be innocent of any wrong-doing, was tortured so that his cries & screams could possibly elicit info from his family members.
More than one man died during torture. One died while chained on a concrete floor Naked, I think) in a freezing cell.
Some of the torturers vomited from the horror of what they were doing, & questioned the legality of it.
Many of those tortured turned out to be innocent, with no knowledge of terrorist activities.
Someone (I forget who it was, maybe someone in the CIA?) said that theoretically, it would be okay to torture a suspect’s child to get into from the suspect.
No actionable intelligence was gained from any of it.
Here’s an article I shared recently that makes a good argument against the use of torture…
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/december-web-only/christian-response-to-senate-torture-report.html?utm_source=ctdirect-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=9474712&utm_content=321967882&utm_campaign=2013
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While looking for something else, I came across this quote which explains one of the things I wrote of above…
“Todd noted that one of those mistakenly detained men died of hypothermia after being doused with water and left chained to a concrete wall, naked from the waist down, in a cell as cold as a meat locker.”
That’s from this article (haven’t read the whole thing yet myself)…
http://reason.com/archives/2014/12/17/torture-as-an-absolute-wrong
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Here’s what I was looking for, in answer to Anonyous’ “Define torture.”…
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2340
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Chas, while we’d like to get info that could save lives and while I recognize we’ve already gone down the slippery slope, I can’t bear the thought of people I know being tortured for doing their jobs. As a Christian, I can’t support torture in any form.
I live in a secular state that does what it thinks is right in its own eyes. As Karen noted, seemingly nothing of value, however, has come from barbaric treatment.
I go back to my stand as a Christian. Imago Deo–every man and woman is made in the image of God. Jesus told us to turn the other cheek when smitted. I think that should be our example–and I hope I never have to prove it. 😦
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Karen, do you trust the accuracy of the report?
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Karen,
“No actionable intelligence was gained from any of it.”
That’s if you believe the one-sided Dem Senate report.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/10/us-usa-cia-torture-directors-idUSKBN0JO1FP20141210
“A group of former top-ranking CIA officials disputed a U.S. Senate committee’s finding that the agency’s interrogation techniques produced no valuable intelligence, saying such work had saved thousands of lives.
Former CIA directors George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, along with three ex-deputy directors, wrote in an op-ed article published on Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal that the Senate Intelligence Committee report also was wrong in saying the agency had been deceptive about its work following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
“The committee has given us … a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation – essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks,” they said.
16x9true The report concluded the CIA failed to disrupt any subsequent plots despite torturing captives during the presidency of George W. Bush.
But the former CIA officials said the United States never would have tracked down and killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011 without information acquired in the interrogation program. Their methods also led to the capture of ranking al Qaeda operatives, provided valuable information about the organization and saved thousands of lives by disrupting al Qaeda plots, including one for an attack on the U.S. West Coast that could have been similar to the Sept. 11 attacks.”
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And don’t forget, there was much the Senate report omitted because it didn’t fit the story they wanted to tell. It’s not just what’s in it, it’s what was intentionally left out because it didn’t fit the narrative.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-14/senate-cia-report-makes-case-torture-worked-in-pakistan
“Al-Baluchi is not the only high-value detainee who gave up valuable information to foreign intelligence services before being sent to a CIA black site, according to the Senate report. Others include Majid Khan and Hassan Ghul, who were held by the Pakistanis. In both cases, the Senate report says or implies that they were questioned in a non-coercive manner, usually through interrogators pointing out inconsistencies in the suspect’s initial story or attempting to befriend the detainee and earn his trust. And both Khan and Ghul opened up in response to this non-coercive interrogation, according to the report.
This is not the case for others, however. Redha al-Najar, who became one of the CIA’s first high-value detainees, mentioned al-Kuwaiti first to Pakistani authorities when he was picked up in Karachi in 2002. The report does not say whether al-Najar’s interrogation was coercive. The report also mentions an unnamed associate of Ghul whom Pakistani authorities interrogated to learn Ghul’s location. The brother of another suspected al-Qaeda leader, known as Hambali, was also interrogated by the Pakistanis, and said to have given up a group of Malaysian and Indonesian students in Pakistan affiliated another terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah. In these cases, too, the report is silent on the manner in which they were interrogated.
In the case of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, an al-Qaeda operative picked up by Pakistani authorities on Sept. 11, 2002, the report implies that harsh interrogation did produce valuable intelligence. Shortly after his arrest, the report says, the Pakistanis sent bin al-Shibh to a third foreign government. The report doesn’t name that country, but it has been reported bin al-Shibh was sent to a jail in Morocco. In early 2003, the Moroccans sent bin al-Shibh to a CIA black site. While he was in Moroccan custody, CIA headquarters at first was dubious of the intelligence taken from bin al-Shibh, but CIA officers on the ground said the bulk of his information was useful intelligence.”
I guess it depends who you ask. And just a reminder, the Senate committee questioned no one at the CIA who was actually involved.
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AJ – I want to say that torture is wrong even if it works. But I know many would think that that is naive, or that I’m willing for many to die rather than to inflict pain on one or a few. And I know that if torture is wrong (as Michelle mentioned, we are all made in God’s image), then we must rely on & trust in God to intervene & keep us safe (or not, according to His will). I also know that that is not a satisfactory answer to most. I’m just glad I don’t have to make these decisions.
At this point, I want to stop thinking about all of this, & think about cute kitties & puppies, warm hugs, & lovey-dovey, sweet-&-innocent stuff like that.
This world, in so many ways, makes me sick. The hatred, the violence, the perversions, the whole ungodly mess.
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Here’s something our old friend Kyle Ambrose wrote on Facebook recently…
“Christians should not be pragmatists or utilitarians.
“It saddens me when a Christian implies that an evil action is okay if it works or achieves some desired goal. Evil is evil. You cannot do evil to accomplish good. (The Bible teaches that God can bring good out of evil, but it does not excuse the initial evil.)
“Once in awhile there is a “gray area.” Should you lie to save somebody’s life? Should you steal food to save your family from starving?
“I do not think that torture is a gray area. I can see why non-Christians might justify it, especially if they care more about expediency than virtue. I cannot see how a Christian can justify it.”
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Comments from another well-informed Facebook friend …
First, that all torturers are doing so for the greater good, as they define and see it. So using that as an excuse authorizes EVERYTHING, including the death of the detainee, murder or torture of their innocent relatives, of civilians in general. If one can make such a trade-off, of others’ lives and rights for what one thinks is the greater good, there’s no limit to the horrors that can be justified.
John Yoo, the lawyer the Bush administration relied upon to justify the techniques as legal, was asked is it would be legal to crush the testicles of the child of a detainee in order to make him talk, and he responded by saying that it depended what the President’s needs were.
Dick Cheney dismissed the fact that 26% of the detainees were found to be innocent of wrongdoing, because of what we faced after 9-11.
If you can crush the testicles of an innocent, in order to make someone who is a 1 in 4 shot of being innocent himself, for the greater good, what is left as a restraint? Nothing.
Second, here’s the biggie: Even we accept all the claims of actionable intelligence gained by the torture which saved lives, there’s this.
We tortured Zubaydah until he told us that Saddam was giving biological and chemical weapons to Al Qaeda.
It was upon that which Colin Powell relied when he gave that speech to the UN arguing for the invasion of Iraq.
So, against the lives that it is claimed that torture saved, one must subtract the 4,000+ lives of American troops lost in Iraq, because we forced a detainee to lie to us in order get relief from torture.
Not to mention all the Iraqi civilian and army and insurgent lives that have been lost, as well as those now being lost due to ISIS.
Third, all the instances of good info coming from torture have been debunked. In each case the same info had already come from other sources, and was merely being verified by torture, which is notorious for getting the victims to say what the torturers want to hear.
(In fact, this is why we had so many innocent detainees, tortured people testified against their personal enemies, innocent people just gave up anyone they could think of)
But the CIA apologists (who are the same ones who destroyed the tapes, spied on Congress, lied twice about it, lied about NSA spying on Americans, lied on all sorts of aspects of the torture techniques) misled by saying that Zubaydah, who was tortured, gave up KSM, without saying that he gave up KSM before he was tortured.
Likewise, they say the Department of Justice signed off on all these techniques. Also a lie.
The military refused to use these techniques, because they don’t work, and because they are illegal and always have been, and because the military is based on honor.
Even the CIA agents who were told to use these techniques begged to be removed from interrogations, vomited at what they were doing, kept asking their superiors if what they were doing was legal.
This all came down from the deviants at the top, people such as Yoo, who is ok with crushing a child’s testicles, Cheney who is not bothered that 26% of detainees turned out to be innocent of wrong-doing.
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AJ – Here is that same friend’s critique of the Bloomberg article. This is pretty long, but his take-away was this:
As the article points out, the problem is that it also elicits false information that wastes time and can’t be trusted, that it harms the very memories we’re trying to mine, that it creates a lack of cooperation among the civilian population who are the best source of information, that it doesn’t work as good as other techniques in the short or the long run.
And the rest of what he wrote, if you’re interested.
That Bloomberg article is more proof that torture doesn’t work. The guy who wrote went into it with his mind made up, and took the wrong lesson from the facts he discovered.
” The report … cites six instances in which Pakistani authorities, in particular, obtained leads through interrogating al-Qaeda operatives that helped disrupt plots or locate other terrorist leaders.”
Note, interrogate doesn’t usually mean torture.
“Upon his arrest in Pakistan, Ammar al-Baluchi was cooperative and provided information …”
So far, still no torture.
” al-Baluchi was interrogated by a Pakistani who had built a rapport with him, leading al-Baluchi to disclose key information on plots against U.S. targets in Pakistan. ”
Still no torture.
” it’s hard to imagine that al-Baluchi’s interrogation by the Pakistanis met Geneva standards. ”
An active imagination is not evidence.
” A former senior Pakistani diplomat who spoke to me on condition of anonymity said it’s likely that al-Baluchi and other detainees mentioned in the report were tortured; ”
Speculation is not evidence.
“I cannot believe al-Baluchi’s interrogation in 2003 would have met international standards.”
Lack of belief is not evidence.
” Human Rights Watch and other groups have long documented how Pakistan’s security services torture suspected terrorists. ”
That’s at least evidence that Pakistan tortures people, but not that al-Baluchi was tortured.
” Pakistani authorities sanctioned the disappearance, torture and murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, an intrepid Pakistani journalist who wrote unsparingly about the connections between al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistan’s own security services.”
This fits the research in the OP, that though torture is bad at eliciting facts, it is used by torturing regimes to terrorize dissidents, as is the case here, Note that there is no assertion that this journalist gave up any useful information.
” Other current and former U.S. intelligence officials told me that it was almost a certainty that al-Baluchi was at the very least threatened with torture when he was in a Pakistani jail. ”
More speculations.
” Majid Khan and Hassan Ghul, who were held by the Pakistanis. In both cases, the Senate report says or implies that they were questioned in a non-coercive manner, usually through interrogators pointing out inconsistencies in the suspect’s initial story or attempting to befriend the detainee and earn his trust. And both Khan and Ghul opened up in response to this non-coercive interrogation, according to the report. ”
The report is based on documents and cables.
” Again, we don’t know for certain what happened at that Moroccan site, but we have a pretty good idea. A U.S. federal appeals court in 2010 dismissed a lawsuit on behalf of some former CIA prisoners against a CIA contractor, Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., used to send prisoners to Morocco, among other foreign jails. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege the Moroccan authorities tortured detainees during interrogations. ”
Again, “we have a pretty good idea” is not evidence. And bin al-Shibh is not one of those who lawsuit was dismissed, so what we have is reasoning that since some in a location were tortured, and since al-Shibh MIGHT have been at that location, he must have been tortured, though why didn’t his lawyer include him in this lawsuit??
” If more information about bin al-Shibh’s interrogation comes to light, possibly in new lawsuits spurred by the release of the Senate report, the Democrats themselves may find that their report on CIA torture inadvertently makes the case that sometimes torture works ”
Yes, if at some time in the future, there is evidence that torture works, then we will have to admit that torture works.
Duh.
But even if so (and it is not yet so), no one is alleging that torture can never elicit information.
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As a friend, an Iraq veteran, said, “You can be sure that if an American General were captured they would be water boarded and tortured.”
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Before they cut his head off.
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bobbuckles,
Does the fact that *they* would do it make ir right for *us* to do?
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