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Jake, it's not out of context.

His (or was it Shuma's?) argument was that terrorism's actual damage is nearly insignificant. Put it next to everyday things like heart disease and car accidents, and you see that the actual danger from terrorism is really quite small. That being the case, the idea of being so afraid of it as a society that we abandon our principles and honor, and compromise our laws and morality to torture people, seems absurd and awful. You offered a counterexample of Sept 11, which was a terrible event, but again once you put the worst terrorist incident that's ever happened to us in perspective next to everyone who's died (Americans, allies, others) in Afghanistan and Iraq since, the losses on Sept 11 start to look remarkably small. Does the pain that we suffered really justify all the pain and death that we've inflicted on others in consequence? The denigration of our military and the torture and deaths of innocents?

Then take into account that Sept 11th could not have been prevented by torturing anyone, and the argument for torture gets even thinner. Sept 11 might have been able to be prevented, but if so it would have been prevented by good police and investigative work, combined with better inter-agency coordination and sharing of intel, It also would have helped if terrorism were a priority or taken seriously by the administration prior to 911, but from what Richard Clarke's written, reports like "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside US" were not paid much attention to. Okay, we've learned that lesson and we're taking it seriously now. Agencies are cooperating better. Those are good and realistic steps to take. Allowing or advocating torture is not.

BTW, not that it matters, but my father was stationed at the pentagon when it was hit, and my then-GF had two brothers and a sister-in-law working in the towers, one of whom was at Cantor-Fitzgerald and did lose his life.

The title makes me think of this instead

It was out of context, I have never made the case torture would have prevented 9-11. And 9-11 had a pretty darned big impact on the nation economically, and it could have been worse, and the point that terrorism is not significant is what I was responding to. Compare that one day to a year's worth of traffic accidents or heart attacks or whatever civilian deaths and the sheer magnitude of the incident is clear. It is not the danger/likelyhood of an incident, it is the potential damage caused by an incident that makes the threat of terrorist attacks worse. Again, picture a major port shut down by some area denial attack, or oil refinary capability loss due to an attack. Those hurt the country more than a year's worth of accidental deaths.

To use my quote and challenge me to name the crap bag we could have tortured to prevent 9-11 is taking my quote out of context, and is also frankly asinine as I have not come close on this thread to stating torture prevents anything.

If you want to, go ahead and quote me where I have condoned torture on this thread (or any other). Then use that against me. But the quote sebster used was used out of context, and I honestly think he does that in some warped way to make himself feel better than the rest of us hoi polloi.

CptJake wrote:It was out of context, I have never made the case torture would have prevented 9-11. And 9-11 had a pretty darned big impact on the nation economically, and it could have been worse, and the point that terrorism is not significant is what I was responding to. Compare that one day to a year's worth of traffic accidents or heart attacks or whatever civilian deaths and the sheer magnitude of the incident is clear. It is not the danger/likelyhood of an incident, it is the potential damage caused by an incident that makes the threat of terrorist attacks worse.

The thing is, in itself something of the magnitude of 9/11 isn't as big of a deal (nationally) as it's claimed. It's the knee-jerk actions of society that makes people make bad choices. For example, 9/11 didn't severely weaken the American economy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did. What Shuma is arguing (I believe) is that society as a whole needs to stop freaking out whenever something happens and think rationally before responding. I, just like you, have no interest in seeing people die to terrorists, but torture removes any semblance of righteousness and gives terrorists around the world a rallying cause to use against us (us being non-terrorists). If we want to preach the values of liberty and justice, we have to live up to the values ourselves first.

Everyone forget the first attempt at the World Trade Center?

qoute

Ramzi Yousef sent a letter to the New York Times after bombing the WTC which spelled out the motive: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." He later stated that he had hoped to kill 250,000 Americans to show them the exact pain they had caused to the Japanese in the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[13]

Just throwing it out there.

You offered a counterexample of Sept 11, which was a terrible event, but again once you put the worst terrorist incident that's ever happened to us in perspective next to everyone who's died (Americans, allies, others) in Afghanistan and Iraq since, the losses on Sept 11 start to look remarkably small. Does the pain that we suffered really justify all the pain and death that we've inflicted on others in consequence? The denigration of our military and the torture and deaths of innocents?

Losses were also small on 7 Dec compared to overall loss of WWII

Pearl Harbor was an attack of one nation against another.

9/11 was an attack by a non-state actor against a nation.

One was war.

The other was crime.

See the difference?

Yup, 9/11 killed less people than die annually to food poisoning. However, it looked much scarier on TV than Ecoli filled cabbage.

Not really since you made 9/11 loss trivial

I do know the dfference and have participated in this war. Its acts of aggression either way. Both are War. One was against countries the other is against organizations with no country alligence

CptJake wrote:Boy, you are the king of out of context. My quote above was in response to the idea that acts of terrorism are insignificant. I assume you read the whole exchange and cherry picked what you wanted.

Does doing this make you feel superior in some way? If not, why do you do it? You don't make a valid point by using quotes out of context.

I was bringing the issue back to the main point in discussion, the need to use torture to prevent terrorism, and pointing out that that no use of terror would have stopped 9/11 anyway. I mean, we can debate whether terrorism is worse than food poisoning, the failure to diagnose and treat cancer in its early stages, or whatever else, but that's a debate about funding priorities, while this debate and it's context is the need to use torture.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CptJake wrote:It was out of context, I have never made the case torture would have prevented 9-11.

It wasn't out of context, the issue is that you missed the context of the debate in which you were posting.

But it looks like it was just misunderstanding, and it's good news you don't support torture.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jihadin wrote:Losses were also small on 7 Dec compared to overall loss of WWII

And I'll ask the question again, who should we have been torturing to prevent Pearl Harbour?

When talking about 9/11 and Pearl Harbour, it is safe to say if only the intelligence community had been able to summarise the information at hand quickly, put the pieces together as it were, then both could have been prevented. That's the lesson here, the need for better organised intelligence services with greater levels of information sharing.

And the reality is that when you lack those things, no amount of torture is going to help. Nor would torture make you safe anyway, there will always be a risk.

It's times like this make me remember that someday this planet will be a frozen ball of rock orbiting a dead sun, and that none of this will matter.

Is it wrong that I'm comforted by that?

You're on a forum centered around a sci-fi (well, dark space opera) game! Hopefully by the time the sun is dead our descendents will be living around some other ones.

Mannahnin wrote:You're on a forum centered around a sci-fi (well, dark space opera) game! Hopefully by the time the sun is dead our descendents will be living around some other ones.

Hopefully, we have led the great space crusade to the outer fringes of the Galaxy. Genghis Connie has been talking about "to the Ghoul Stars" recently.

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:You're on a forum centered around a sci-fi (well, dark space opera) game! Hopefully by the time the sun is dead our descendents will be living around some other ones.

Hopefully, we have led the great space crusade to the outer fringes of the Galaxy. Genghis Connie has been talking about "to the Ghoul Stars" recently.

You sure it's not a band on some new Disney show?

AustonT wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:You're on a forum centered around a sci-fi (well, dark space opera) game! Hopefully by the time the sun is dead our descendents will be living around some other ones.

Hopefully, we have led the great space crusade to the outer fringes of the Galaxy. Genghis Connie has been talking about "to the Ghoul Stars" recently.

You sure it's not a band on some new Disney show?

Well she did remind me that rocks are not free citizen.

It sounds like Obama is going to reverse himself, and okay the Bill despite previously claiming he was going to Veto it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama?CMP=twt_gu

Perhaps it is part of his new re-election plan?

Because the Bill gave him out I mention earlier. He's to ensure basicaly a panel to make sure it doesn't happen. Which in turn becomes their problem not his. Besides if you, by meaning you I mean a bad guy, is out into military custody you much rather be there then in a regular federal pen.