We tortured some folks
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, June 1, 2025 14:38
VIEWED: 16333
PAGE 5 of 13
Can't answer the question? Why does that not surprise me?
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Can't answer the question? Why does that not surprise me?
As the character, Miss Mona Lisa Vito, so eloquently put it...
" It's a bullshit question. It's impossible to answer."
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It's a perfectly valid question.
If you can think about something - which involves doing mental stuff - then you're not reacting reflexively. If you're reacting reflexively, then you're not thinking. The two really are mutually exclusive. They are "either ... or".
That you can't UNDERSTAND the question - well, that doesn't surprise me either.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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A very distressing chapter in US history. And as for the rest of us, it demonstrated what many already believed, that the ideals upon which America was founded, and held up as the moral bastion of the world was pretty much - meh - just like everywhere else, not more moral, not more about freedom, just into self interest and cheap vengence.
And having said this many, many times before, every torturer, every regime that uses tortures feels perfectly validated, perfectly convinced that these actions are for the greater good, necessary for national security, rightful and justified vengence. Of course they never are, they're just actions that dehumanise victim and torturer, as anyone with an ounce of moral backbone would be aware.
Obama's condemnation of this sorry chapter is a positive step. Not enough, but a beginning.
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In a sideways note, there are people here who apparently think I don't know about weapons in the American Revolutionary War. I take a clue from Francis Scott Keyes, who wrote about
bombs bursting in air
Clearly, not cannonball (which wouldn't be doing their job if they fell apart halfway to their target) but actual bombs - explosive-filled shells.
Quote:
The howitzer was originally developed to fire bombs (powder-filled explosive shells.) This required a large bore in order to get the best effect from the larger projectiles, but it also required that the propelling charge be reduced to about one-ninth of the shell weight, in order not to over-stress the hollow projectile. Since the small charge burned so quickly, there was no need for a long barrel, and the howitzer therefore evolved into a large caliber gun with a short barrel - about five to seven times the caliber was the generally accepted figure, as opposed to 15 to 25 times for guns. Howitzers, like mortars, were chambered.
The advantages of dropping the explosive shell over obstacles was introduced after the howitzer had entered service, and the design was soon modified to allow more elevation to the barrel to obtain plunging fire. Due to the short barrel and light charge this did not introduce any complications in the way of carriage design, although it must be stressed that in the 18th century an elevation of twenty degrees was considered high for a howitzer. It should also be added that although the elevation was increased over that of the gun, this was offset by the lower charge, and the howitzer never achieved greater ranges than guns of equivalent calibre.
http://www.americanrevolution.org/artillery.php
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
In a sideways note, there are people here who apparently think I don't know about weapons in the American Revolutionary War. I take a clue from Francis Scott Keyes, who wrote about
bombs bursting in air
The man's name was Francis Scott Key, not Keyes.
He wrote the "bombs bursting in air" line during the shelling of Fort McHenry in the War Of 1812, not the Revolutionary War.
We all know you're a complete idiot, but this latest from you is really too much stupidity for one person.
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So, we tortured some folks.
Nearly everyone else in the world "gets it". They've known for years that the USA operated black sites all over the world, to torture people specifically because they weren't on American soil and therefore didn't violate whatever tissue-paper laws were in place at the time. Bush spent some time "thinking" about locations ... they talked about American bases abroad such as Gitmo, and also American Navy ships in international waters. I remember this discussion clearly from the time when it occurred, which indicated that the admin planned on, and deliberately violated, whatever (few) restrictions were placed on them by Attny Gnl Gonzales.
This is the chance for Americans to "get" what everyone else already knows: America is no better than Uzbekistan, or North Korea, or any of the other nations that we like to point to as being tyrannical. Because when our government is afraid, it'll resort to morally vile behavior, even tho it's completely ineffective for anything other than terrorizing a population.
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As far as not building nations and societies with guns and bombs, we've tried just that many many times over, everywhere from the Mideast to Central and South America. The latest attempt was bombing Libya: What were we trying to do, bomb them into "freedom"?
Trying to tamp down popular movements and widely-shared assumptions with violence doesn't work for long. You might be able to impose your will for a few decades, as we did with the Shah in Iran, but in the end the population will erupt. Just look at China... the Cultural Revolution ran its course, and the government is scared of its own population.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Dick Cheney was on Meet the Press today, Dec 14, 2014:
"We were very careful to stop short of torture," said Cheney.
He has so few regrets about all this. People deserve to know that the American government (proudly!) copied techniques developed by Communist China for the purpose of extracting false confessions. Well done, Dick Cheney. Good to hear you tell the world on TV that you are a great, yet so modest, patriot.
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Indeed. Except that waterboarding has a long and storied history, going back at least to the Spanish Inquisition, where nobody argued that it wasn't torture! It was recognized as a form of slow-motion drowning.
The USA government executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding civilians. So our government's stance on waterboarding and torture has been hypocritical for quite a while.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns. Or with torture either.
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Quote:I'm going to argue with you. The problem is not hypocrisy. America has always been hypocritical. The problem is incompetency. Dick Cheney radiates signals that he is fake. He demonstrates that every time he is on TV, but a 100,000,000 Americans believe he sounds good and is a competent, farsighted leader of America. That they believe someone who always was no damn good at his job is good is a problem far bigger than hypocrisy. It is impossible to have a great nation built on 100,000,000 people who can't see through Cheney's fakery. Cheney has got those people completely mesmerized by the sound of his voice.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So our government's stance on waterboarding and torture has been hypocritical for quite a while.
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