Torturing Terrorists-It’s Not That Hard

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There’s a lot of big things happening right now-LOTS, and it’s hard to get a grasp for even seasoned newshounds to keep track of exactly where we are and where we’re going. However, the story that dominates of late-the story w the most legs is the torture allegations. To that end, I think the best piece I’ve read on it is this one, and I hope everyone reads it…especially as just yesterday some people forgot, and now we’ve got fresh images of a NYC in panic as a low-flying jetliner is chased by Air Force fighters over the skies of Manhattan.

Make Terrorists Choose Between Jumping or Burning: Now That Would Be Torture

So now the president is considering show trials of Bush Administration officials who issued opinions on permissibility of “harsh” interrogation techniques on Al Qaeda terrorists.

Once again, folks, this is not hard.

Let’s flash back to the sunny September day when hell was unleashed on our nation. Many horrors could be recalled from 9/11, but I’d like to bring to remembrance just one: The roughly 200 innocent souls, by one estimate, forced into the inconceivable choice to hurl themselves from the towers to escape the searing heat and smothering smoke from flaming jet fuel.

Author Michael Daly recounted the scene: “Some jumped together, holding hands. Most leapt singly, often tumbling as they fell . . . most were on their backs as they reached the lower floors, facing the heavens if not necessarily heaven. Their last sight was of the perfect baby-blue sky as they struck the pavement with a velocity that instantly turned a living person into a bright red splatter. The sound was jarring, loud, a body becoming a bomb.”

You say Khalid Sheik Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times? Cry me a river.

How about if we had tossed this cold-hearted butcher into a room on a platform some 1,300 feet up, fired it up to a toasty 2000oF, pumped in the acrid smoke of combusting fuel, and given KSM a better choice than his blameless victims got: Talk, jump or feel your flesh sizzle off?

Now that might have been torture.

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Bob Maistros’s post (linked) is spot on. That emotions could so cloud what is right and wrong and just and unjust makes me sad. Oh, emotions…. that obviously is also politics. The rule book and feel-good is for us. The enemy… well, we have to understand their hate and their world-view. The United States and her citizens? No, not so much.

I will never forget what the Democratic party has done and will never vote for one… ever. They are all tarred with the same brush because precious few have stepped up and stopped the whackos in that party. A pall on their political party then and their house.

‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.’

this whole “photo op” is a mistake that shouldn’t happen. Obama needs to be more aware of these things. Found this video today that shows how different news outlets are covering the story. definitely worth a look:

http://www.newsy.com/videos/flyover_triggers_9_11_flashback/

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‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.’
<<

The jihadist mindset is so foreign to the West that a person would have to very sick indeed over here in order to come even close to those monsters.

The Left loves it when they can mount a “surgical strike” to “take out” the bad guys. But few liberals indeed will ever get within 10,000 miles of seeing a real head shot through the scope of a rifle. And few liberals will see what agony and mess that a less than perfect head shot can cause. For that matter, few liberals can bring themselves to harvest animals for food.

But liberals are happy to chain themselves to old trees to delay logging. Or chain themselves to some building that Saddam told them was important in order to serve as human shields.

Life can be really tough, especially when jihadists are trying to impose Islam’s Three Demands on you: convert, submit or die! The jihadists already got my answer.

You make the assumption that all who were tortured were terrorists. What about the innocent people sold to the US for thirty pieces of silver, flown to some former KGB torture suite in central asia, then tortutured until they confess to something they haven’t done. Did they deserve what they got?

mynameis @

Well, since you asked, what innocent folks hang out with terrorists and get caught with them?
And Why?

What former KGB sites do you refer to?

Be specific, OK? I refuse to do your homework. Thanks for asking.

I agree. Also strange when ‘some’ Americans sympathised with the IRA members who went on Hunger Strike in the early 1980s. At least they had a choice whether to live or die – unlike their victims.

Old Trooper, surely you are capable of more nuanced beliefs than that there is “terrorist land” and everyone in it is a terrorist? The coalition was paying big bounties, in one of the poorest parts of the world, do you really believe the pakistani police are not so corrupt that they wouldn’t hand over a few random people in return for many multiples of there annual salaries.

If you want examples, try Khaled el Masri, a German car salesman kidnapped while on holiday in Macedonia and flown to Afghanistan.

Or this one:

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/casework_jamalkiyemba.htm

Cases: Jamal ‘Tony’ Kiyemba (Guantánamo Bay)

Sold to the United States

Jamal Kiyemba is originally from Uganda. His parents separated and his mother moved to London where she raised his siblings. When his father died in an accident in Uganda, Jamal joined his mother, completed school and went to the University of Leicester, where he studied to become a pharmacist.
His family in Uganda was divided between strong Catholicism and a moderate strain of Islam. Jamal himself was brought up Catholic, but converted to Islam while at University.

Jamal was travelling in Pakistan when he was seized and turned over to the US authorities for a bounty of $5,000 (which was the amount the US military were offering for foreign Muslim ‘terrorists’). Jamal had never been to Afghanistan until the American military took him there and there’s no evidence that he ever committed a hostile act against the US or anyone else.

Jamal spent more than three years in Guantánamo Bay before the US authorities finally transferred him to Uganda in February 2006. Though his life was based in the UK, the British Government declined to intervene on Jamal’s behalf on the grounds that he is not a British national. Jamal’s right to enter the UK was revoked, and he has had to rebuild his life in Uganda, far away from his family and friends.

Jamal was represented by Reprieve’s Legal Director, Clive Stafford Smith, and in Britain by Louise Christian.

@mynameis:

You make the assumption that all who were tortured were terrorists.

You make the assumption that everyone who uses the word “torture” is telling the truth even when there is no evidence to support their claims.

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el Masri was held for a short period of time due to mistaken identity and was then released.

He makes claims of “torture” but has no evidence.

***********

Kieymba acknowledged that he was headed to Afghanistan to assist his fellow Muslims who were under attack.

Following Sept 11, he traveled from England to Iran to Pakistan in an effort to get to Afghanistan.

He was apprehended at the Paki/Afghan border.

What was your point again?

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Exit question: What is your definition of the word “torture”?