What is equal in trade to freedom and the rule of law?

[deminks]

I ask Congress to tell us. Is there a bridge or a barrel of oil that is equal in trade? Is there a personal yacht or a golf trip to Scotland equal in trade? Is there a meeting with someone or a promise equal in trade? Is there some arousal from the torture, hatred and pain of others equal in trade? What have you traded for our future?

Do not vote for torture. Government should be of laws, rather than of men.


The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

Torture belongs in the past. There are other ways, and god knows we are already using them, to get information. More useful information. We are better than this. Congress may not be, Smirky may not be, but we are.

[sui generis]

1. that's the issue though

it's not about "rule of law", it's about changing the laws to make torture legal, and then claiming we're a nation of laws.

Every time I hear this administration say "we didn't do anything illegal" it makes me cringe.

Burning Jews was legal in Nazi Germany.

[nuxvomica]

2. I think they know there are better ways to get intel

I'm convinced that the pragmatic arguments against torture are meaningless to them. It's the potential for intimidation and control of intel that they want. Torture doesn't deliver the truth and that's just fine with the Bushistas. They don't want the truth but rather the ability to control what people perceive is the truth, just as they do with the RNC talking points repeated verbatim by every one of their media outlets. Faux News et al and torture: It's all the same program.

[Deep13]

3. So far, ordinary police work is best defense.

That's a utilitarian argument, of course. I don't see how there can be any reasonable debate on this. Torture is a moral outrage. It is like saying that lesser degrees of slavery can be justified. We also know that human nature will cause people to torture just for the hell of it.

All the terrorist acts that have been stopped have been stopped with ordinary police work using ordinary methods. The recent airline plot was uncovered by the British, not Homeland Security; by Scotland Yard, not MI5 or the military; and using conventional police methods not torture or domestic spying.

[HereSince1628]

4. Excellent and true. But until fear is put back in it's cage

it will scour the countryside and cultivate all the worst of conservative human nature.

Our radical conservatives, despite their religiosity, fear death above all things. In their irrationality they invoke their fixation with authority and power to provide a false sense of control over death and pain BY CAUSING IT IN OTHERS.

Everywhere that fear sows its dragon teeth the worst horrors of inhumanity spring up.