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The GOP Presidential candidates on interrogation:

[Brit] Hume [asked] the candidates . . . How aggressively would you interrogate" . . . captured suspects?

Rudy Giuliani — . . . "I'd say every method they could think of," affirmed Giuliani.

. . . Mitt Romney . . . "Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used."

Via Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan, Gestapo Chief Muller's "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

As Sullivan writes:

There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: . . . The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

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  • Display: Sort:
    I think the fact that we now torture (5.00 / 1) (#1)
    by andgarden on Wed May 30, 2007 at 08:45:39 AM EST
    makes me uncomfortable than almost anything else. This will be a very difficult stain to remove.

    Remove? (5.00 / 2) (#2)
    by squeaky on Wed May 30, 2007 at 11:21:59 AM EST
    It is a permanent stain. How could it ever be removed?

    Parent
    Understanding (none / 0) (#4)
    by Edger on Wed May 30, 2007 at 12:25:56 PM EST
    The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes.

    They still are.

    The punishment for them was death.

    Maybe it should still be.

    Torturing people, regardless of how bad they might be, is the one crime for which I might be convinced to support, or at least waver and not oppose, the death penalty.

    What does that say? Is my sentence above an indication, in some way, of why and how torture can occur? That someone like me can see such demonic traits in torturers that I would relent on the death penalty? Somehow I doubt I'm alone in that.

    Retired Command Sergeant Major Eric Haney: a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit:

    The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument.
    ...
    The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in.
    "The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it."

    Torture is an utterly immoral insidious creeping dehumanizing evil, done only by utterly immoral insidious creeping dehumanized people.


    What is the defintion of torture? (none / 0) (#5)
    by Edger on Wed May 30, 2007 at 12:28:55 PM EST
    Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period.


    Parent
    Uber Nazis (none / 0) (#6)
    by squeaky on Wed May 30, 2007 at 02:33:49 PM EST
    Hey let's cut the Nazi's some slack:
    As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their 'enhanced interrogation techniques' would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff ... Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. 'Waterboarding" was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush.

    The victims, by the way, were not in uniform. And the Nazis tried to argue, just as John Yoo did, that this made torturing them legit.

    Progress

    Yes, but we're catching up (none / 0) (#8)
    by Alien Abductee on Wed May 30, 2007 at 07:23:52 PM EST
    on the professionalism.

    NYT:

    The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects...

    "We're just saying we have to bring interrogation up to the level of professionalism in other intelligence disciplines."

    I can't wait.

    Parent

    et al (none / 0) (#7)
    by jimakaPPJ on Wed May 30, 2007 at 06:58:14 PM EST
    I think this what is known as a preemptive personal attack...

    right on cue (none / 0) (#9)
    by Sailor on Wed May 30, 2007 at 09:41:27 PM EST
    especially considering that this huckster has alleged that very same point, over and over, against all logic and facts.

    But then hucksters only know lying and eschew facts for a living.

    Parent