Change you were dumb enough to believe in
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 9, 2025 21:45
VIEWED: 9196
PAGE 8 of 14
...Yeah... Either I'm really not following Mr. Holder, or I strongly disagree.
Is he trying to make an "ends justify the means" argument? That's what it sounds like with his "it's dependent on circumstances and intent" (to paraphrase) comment.
And then he also seems to argue that it's not torture if they're only just training them?
And he also doesn't seem to recognize that there's a such thing as psychological torture. Or that making someone panicked and desperate to breathe, experiencing the associated fear of being in the power of an authority figure who seems like they would kill you, isn't psychological torture?
If torture is only in the eyes of the actor, and only based on intent, then I could just break someone's fingers, say I needed the information to save lives, or say it was just an accident and it wasn't torture, and I couldn't be convicted. A court that accepted Holder's argument and established that precedence in law would consider any claims of torture mere hearsay.
Even Holder's definition of terms don't hold up, and his logic certainly doesn't if followed through to it's conclusion.
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Well Jack, me, I don't see the point of fightin with the bonehead - cause like every other enabler of tyranny in history, his ass is gonna be first under the treads of the machine he helped put in motion.
I myself am more concerned about makin my ass not be next in line, at this time - yanno ?
-F
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First of all, who the hell is Cheney? Was he Commander in Chief ? Hell no, that was Bush. Where are you getting this view that CHENEY, and Cheney alone was in charge of what went on in Gitmo, and not Bush ?
Hey, I'm just following your lead - YOU are the one who claims that Cheney is a "credible" source on torture, so apparently YOU think he was deeply involved and/or has some deep background in torture.
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Our own Navy Seals go through water boarding, in survival training, so to call this 'torture' is a complete misnomer and mis characterization of the enhanced interrogation practices.
Please expand on this point a bit. WHY do they go through the SERE training? What is its purpose? For what reasons are they trained in this manner? What is the background of SERE training? How did it come about? What was its purpose?
Also, why then did we mischaracterize it when it was done to Americans by Chinese, North Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, and others, and when it was done to others by Pol Pot?
By the way... Since when do you listen to Holder? When did he become your version of all that is right? Your kind have been against him at every turn, but on this point, you find yourself in complete agreement? How convenient for you.
Mike
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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kwickie
You're a master at the dodge and weave. YOU brought up the charge that Cheney lied. That was YOU, not me.
And there's no torture, so why do you continue to misrepresent the issue in that manner ? It's because if you dealt in the facts, you'd have to conclude that you literally have no case.
Holder, Obama's own A.G. , concluded that water boarding, where INTENT to not harm or inflict permanent damage on the individual is the goal, is perfectly legal. We do it to our own, so saying it's torture when doing it to others is a complete farce.
I'll not waste time on matters where I've already given you the answers. You're simply playing the part of a child, refusing to face facts, and resorting to asking an endless array of questions, so as to avoid having to THINK for yourself.
The T.Rex they call JANE!
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Talk about dodge-n-weave...
So now you're playing chickenshit and refusing to answer.
Typical Republican coward.
Mike
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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AU: Think about it. If Holder is coming out okay on waterboarding, then that says something even more chilling about Obama's plans besides keeping wiretapping going and some of the other human rights issues the government is stomping all over lately.
Seriously, man, this is bad news. Anyone who supports something you wouldn't like have done to you for some sort of security measure or technicality, you should run the feck away from. They're authoritarian sociopaths.
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where INTENT to not harm or inflict permanent damage on the individual is the goal, is perfectly legal. We do it to our own, so saying it's torture when doing it to others is a complete farce.
Interesting that Navy seals undergo waterboarding as well, I would be interested to know if they are completely denied the option of calling an end to things, like interrrogated suspects.
I found this interesting, journalist Christopher Hitchens submits to waterboarding:
As for this argument that it must not be torture if it doesn't inflict permanent damage (or at least we don't intend it to?) - this seems like too narrow a definition for torture. If you were tied to a wooden cross and crucified Rap, and cut down after many hours just before you die from exhaustion and asphyxiation - would you say you hadn't experienced torture?
Heads should roll
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Originally posted by AURaptor:
kpo - if Cheney is a liar, then so are Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, George Tenet, and countless others.
So, why are you focusing in on Cheney again?
The T.Rex they call JANE!
I'm not sure you followed my logic. I'm not blaming him for believing Sadaam had WMD - many people did (or at least strongly suspected), for over a decade. I'm blaming him for exaggerating the evidence, and over-selling the case for war. With his quote above you cannot deny that he was guilty of this - he said 'NO DOUBT'.
Now whether this was pure dishonesty, or arrogant foolishness, or delusion brought on by fearful hysteria – who can say? All we can say for certain is that it must’ve been a combination of these things (I personally lean towards a combination of all 3) – it’s the only way to explain quotes like the one above, in a way that actually adds up.
Now addressing your point that other politicians can also be quoted on Iraq and WMDs – of course they can, a lot of people believed the falsehood, and said so. That doesn’t mean they were responsible for cooking it up and selling it – that kind of credit can only be given to the administration/intelligence services. You’re not making a fair (and fairly obvious) distinction – some politicians beat the drum for war (Cheney was one of the first, and loudest), others merely heard it and marched along to its beat. It's the difference between inventing a lie and selling it, and believing a lie and repeating it. Only one of these makes you a liar.
You should post your list of politicians' quotes and then people can make up their own minds which politicians fall into which category, whether or not Bill & Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi were one of the loudest drumbeats for war.
Heads should roll
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Just for the record, AG Holder never said that waterboarding was legal, and certainly never gave the impression that Obama would ever use it. He said under some interpretations in the strictest legal sense it may not be illegal. Holder has a hard time communicating to human beings, but he certainly never meant that torture, like waterbaording, was legal.
I think Obama's doing a good job on national security. For those of you upset at him for keeping some of the Bush policies in place, I suggest you relax and give the man some time. He jumped the gun in January by declaring the closure of Gitmo. He had no plan, and no international cooperation. Gitmo's really the best place for "some" of them, the rest should be tried immediately and put in American prisons, which it seems he wants to do. We have far worse felons in prisons than these jihad clowns. Ever watch Lock-Up on MSNBC? Holy crap!
Gitmo is Club Med compared to our gang-run prisons.
Obama has un-precedented problems now with N. Korea and Iran. Add those to the Bush mess left in Iraq & Afghanistan, and you can see why Obama has to be cautious as he fights the war on terror. Yes, the war on terror, it hasn't gone away simply due to Obama's election, so he must first be a President. His "social & financial" programs are another story, but as far as being our Commander In Chief with the responsibility of keeping Americans safe, I have to applaud him so far.
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Seriously, man, this is bad news. Anyone who supports something you wouldn't like have done to you for some sort of security measure or technicality, you should run the feck away from. They're authoritarian sociopaths.
I concur, Holder is a freakin lunatic, and I am none too pleased with an administration that thinks a maniac like him should serve in the post he does.
I put that right up there with sending Bolton to the UN as amazingly stupid and malicious.
But before I get to hacking them off at the knees, I got a job to finish by feeding the circular firing squad also known as the Republican Party - cause if you don't drive the stake in while they're down and out, they'll be back - and we need to finish THAT job good and proper or we will just be replacing one set of monsters with another a couple years down the road.
That's not to say I can't find the time to throw some sabots in the gears of the current administration, but my function seems right now to be the Dept of And-Then-What-Happens ?
So, think about what's likely to replace them if we *don't* finish off the bastards who spent eight years wrecking our whole nation end to end ?
And so, gotta finish the job at hand first.
*hums the 'execution' soundbite from Postal*
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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