[David-kyo]

Was it a necessary step to ensure the security of the nation, or a mock towards democracy and inalienable rights? What do you think?
(See here.)

[Gobbler]

It is and was a flaw in the American law system.

[MyPantsAreOnFire]

"TORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-CHAAAAAAAH!!!"

Seriously though, while this is a tiny step towards maybe whipping this jerkstore back into line, it's reflective of a completely asinine line of thought. Americans desperately want to be seen as "victims" or the "good guys" in this "war," yet too many then see zero problem acting like complete barbarians simply because "oh, THEY get to do it." If you start acting like the supposed "bad guys," how are you any better than them?

Torture is retarded. In terms of getting legitimate helpful information, it's a massively flawed practice. It doesn't work, period.

This post has been edited by MyPantsAreOnFire: 18 October 2006 - 07:36 AM

[Deepsycher]

I see a possibility that suspects might be dead before they spoke the truth the interrogators want to hear. I wonder if this could be a retaliation of recent forces recommending to pull out. So that America can make more targets with no rights added.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 18 October 2006 - 08:35 AM

[Despondent]

Hmm, I think the Senate passed it. POTUS signs it.

Ever seen the ridiculous tv show, "24"? It has justified torture. Of course the fox network is in the GOP camp which is evidenced by the fact that 24, about counter-terrorism premiered before 9-11, which is a government conspiracy I guess.

The suspects are going to be dead before they're freed anyway.

[David-kyo]

By saying he passed it, I meant he did not VETO it. Falls into the same category for me.

[Slade]

Well fuck. I'd really hoped we'd ended this when earlier this year his secret military tribunals were shot down as constitutional, and I'd hoped against hope that the administration would finally own up to being full of assholes and say "Ok, fine. We'll agree to the laws in place instead of trying to make all of the illegal things we do legal." I was wrong.

Fuck. There's just no other way to put it.

Also note the asinine fallacy that the neo-cons love to promote as printed in that article, that you either support them completely or are "coddling terrorists." Mmm... Bullshit...

[David-kyo]

For those of you who don't read Yahtzee's site, this is cut out from his update on the 5th of October:

"7. Given that waging war on abstract concepts is retarded, and that the application of 'good and evil' in a real world context is also retarded, the current US administration is

A. Retarded
B. Super retarded
C. Off the retarded scale
D. BOING"

He is... very intuitive, I think.

[Ninja Duck]

My first thought was that this was a very, very dumb thing for a Congressman to agree to before Midterm elections.

My second thought was that they'll all get re-elected anyway, and they know it, so they show it off by passing laws just to spite the American people.

I'm going to go cry now.

[civilian_number_two]

We'd like to invade Iran. We have no justification to do so. Something blows up. We capture some unnamed brown people and detain them without trial. Secretly, we torture them, hinting that we would like them to say that they were responsible for the explosion and that Iran backed them. We release to the public that we have reliable information that Iran is behind a recent terror event, but that the details are a matter of National Security. We attack Iran. We never find any terror cells or evidence of any plots against America. We say that we did anyway.

This is an awesome law. The right to torture any foreigner, just by saying that he is a terror suspect, basicall allows the US military the right to torture any foreigner. This is more power than the Emperors had when Rome was at its worst. At least they were only allowed to torture slaves.

[J m HofMarN]

Keith Olbermann -que whistling and cheers- did a pretty good piece on the worst part of this bill, which oddly enough isn't the torture. It's the tiny little part where they say that people who pose a danger to the government don't have to be made aware of the charges against them, in a word that anyone the government dosn't like can be denied Habeus Corpus.

Now, not being told what you're charged with alone isn't such a bad thing, but look at it more closely: this blows away almost the entire bill of rights. If you're arrested for a protest, and held incommunicado without being charged you can't get out of it on first ammendment grounds, because you havnt been charged with anything that would fall under the first ammendment, because you havnt been charged with ANYTHING.

Habeus Corpus is a right that extends far earlier than the US government. It isn't an American value, it's a global value, and as I recall from the Olberman's report the language isn't limited to foreign terrorists either or people comitting violence.

This is of course not to be a detriment to the fact that the parts of the bill that justify torture are horribly wrong too. The fact of the matter is that the use of torture IS justified on a WHAT IF basis. Just like, say, cooking a dead baby and eating it would be justified on the basis of WHAT IF you were starving. Ordinarily, you would not cook a dead baby and eat it, so why pass laws to make a what if situation the legal norm? Most POWs in Guantanamo and elsewhere can't possibly have knowledge of impending attacks due to how long they're being held.

But if somehow it becomes clear that someone does, if that one in a million chance pops up that a terrorist has that information that could save hundreds of lives, than yeah, people are justified in working to get it. But that's a what if scenario which shouldn't be the norm. People often make the argument that any defense of so-called terrorists at all is too much. That because we're at war with brown skinned people they deserve no mercy. But then that applies to any people we're at war with:

"You're a terrorist and you killed some people, so now I get to beat you with this rubber hose"

could just as easily become

"You're from a coutnry we're currently at war with and you killed some people, so now I get to beat you with this rubber hose"

It's not that big of a leap.

[civilian_number_two]

It's not even a leap at all. The thing is, and I know lawyers have already thought of this, if they're justified in using extreme techniques to question any foreign terror suspect, then they can essentially do whatever they want to anyone who is not a citizen of the US. Throw a "terror" label on them, and you can round up drunk Canadians partying it up on a long weekend. This bill so far hasn't been used in this way (hey, they just invented it), but it's not that big a leap, and suddenly the FBI has as much power as Tiberius.

[Spoon Poetic]

I really don't see what's so different about this bill than the laws that were already in place. Replace the word "terrorist" with "traitor" and that's how the country ran anyway, before all of this. They could "suspect" someone was a "traitor" and they'd still suspend habeas corpus, and torture them, etc. It just seems like a new label, to me.

[MyPantsAreOnFire]

Sadly, this just seems to strengthen the idea that my fellow Americans do not learn from their history...from the original Alien & Sedition Act pimped out by a bunch of the "founding fathers" to Lincoln suspending habeus corpus during the civil war and imprisoning tens of thousands of people on simply the suspicion of them having "southern sympathies" to Wilson's Sedition Act of 1918 to the Alien Registration Act of 1940 to the internment of Japanes-Americans during WW2. Our history is riddled with attempts to strip the legal rights of the country's own citizens under the umbrella of fear, suspicion and paranoia. And nobody's remembering a goddamn thing.

[David-kyo]

I have a metaphor in mind: a government that is that paranoid is somewhat like a king who riddles his own dungeons with secret escape tunnels. So if there's a coup d'état (or how ever it is spelled) and he gets thrown in jail by the oppressed thousands, he can get away. Something tells me that a king like that can't manage to convince himself that he is doing his job heartedly, for some reason.