<I was completely appalled by the previous thread on the efficacy of torture.

Yes it is very revolting and appalling. It is wading threw a sewer to save your life or the life of others. . . although could never compare to that on scale. But the prospect of many more being tortured and killed at the hands of more perpetrators makes it one of those things to do that you have to do, else you become just as bad by allowing more dealth, and ones every bit as painful. Need I remind anyone of people crawing off the bottom elevators on the bottom floor of the WTC with thier skin falling off in globs? Do we want more? Is it worth doing the worst to one of them to prevent the worst from happening to many more of us?

Torture is inhumane, it is unreliable, it is ineffective, except in inflicting pain. You could get someone to admit to assassinating Lincoln with the application of torture. That doesn't make the information true. People will admit to anything just to make their tormentors stop.

There is an art to it I am sure. And we aren't the chineese or mideval england here, with our motives lying in getting someone to confesss or we will stop. We don't care about confessions, we care about information. You must hav einfo to start at first. Then you have a set amount of info you would expect the tormentee to get. Then you do not stop pushing the buttons until the information you would expect them to know has been elicited out and then some . . . .the 'then some' part being the bonus that slips out while they are going over what you expect them to know.

Torture is also illegal. Because it is inhumane, unreliable and ineffective.

but agian, we are out of the realm of laws, this is war time. I mean do enemy POWs have a right to a free phone call? do we read them maranda rights? Do we afford them lawers? No.

To say that there are no war crimes is to say that soldiers need not be held to any standards of behavior at all, nor need states at war. Massacre, torture, genocide and rape are not instruments of policy or means to achieve military objectives. They are abominations. To say we as a species have no power or right to prosecute war crimes is to say that we are helpless in the face of these abominations. You can accept that if you wish. I refuse.

Well I have serious logical problems with the idea that 'just following orders' is an excuss. I mean technically every soldier in the german army should be thrown in jail for following the order to attack other countries. Its quite subjective. I mean should the pilots of the enola gay said ' no this is wrong to drop this bomb in our opinion, we won't follow that order'. . . uhm. . . orders are orders.If you don't follow them you might get shot by a commanding officer. So we expect the enemy to tdo the right hting and get themselves killed by thier commanding officers, and if they don't then we will kill them becasue what they did was wrong. . . I dunno. . . It eventually settles on the fact aht 'whoever wins decides what warcrimes are'

The United States has no common culture, as our citizens come from everywhere. We have no common religion. We barely have a common language, though English is close because it's driven by economics. Yet we hang together because of a common philosophy articulated in a system of laws. If we turn our backs on the law, we will eliminate the bedrock of our nation and will begin, very slowly at first, to disintegrate.

This is cutting off our head to save our beard. Were the attacks not enough? There were possibly as many as 14 other planes with hijackers judging by the number of arab pilots in the extra seat on many airliners. You think how much damage just three did. we could have lost the capitol building, the whitehouse, airforce one, more of the pentagon, part of a nuclear plant, maybe some aircraft carriers, the new york stock exchange, the sears tower, the space needle. . and there five more aircraft to go. . . . four, they could also hit the empire state building or mall of america. . .

Rumsfeld was in the pentagon need I remind anyone when this happened (s o much for it being a government/cabnet level conspiracy for some folks) we could have lost congressmen, a president or vice presidents. . .

Yes we damn near got our heads cut off. Does a suitcase nuke need to go off before we realize how bad it is? Or is that too much? maybe that would be so sureal it would put everyone in a daze so taht they would not hav e the mind to react properly. Perhaps this is what happened, perhaps everyone is in a daze and does not realize the severity of the situation. . .

To sum it up, this has proved our country to be fragile and vulnerable, let to such attacks, let us not get a false sense of security again. Let us not spare any luxuries to the perpetrators either, let us not leave them the reassurance that they will have secrets kept, let us not leave them the assurance that in committing a terroist act, they may well receive a punishment worse than any death they can imagine.

If we suspend any of our laws because of crisis,

crisis is no where near strong enougha term, I guess it is overused by the media.

which we have done in the past, we will need to keep that in the forefront of our social consciousness

sounds like a deal. But for now, the red is positive and the black is negative.

Regards,
-Justin Kelly