On scandal and excommunication

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

Playing games? You argued that it is illegal for someone to shove bamboo shoots up their fingers or to have someone else do it to them. Are you abandoning that line of argument? Because you know if you do, you must concede the vast difference between what happened to Hitchens and what happened to KSM, and if you concede that, well- you haven't been right about anything in this thread.

Actually, I said both moral and legal. No doubt you chose to focus on the "legal" because it's where you could play games the easiest. I confess I'm not as good at that game as you, but I'm sure we could come up with some examples of torture that aren't legal, under any circumstance.

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

IF someone volunteers for "torture," it isn't, by definition, torture until it crosses a line into territory where they have a fear of imminent death (and if the person didn't stop "torturing" them at that point, it would be illegal. So yes, it is legally A-OK to shove bamboo shoots up someone's fingernails if they want you to do it.

Ah, so "fear of imminent death" is the only standard for torture now, eh? You're backtracking.

[Tex]

Just a little reminder of what real torture looks like:

Khidir was just 6 years old when he was savagely ripped away from his family, kidnapped by al Qaeda operatives in Iraq.

"They beat me with a shovel, they pulled my teeth out with pliers, they would go like this and pull it," said Khidir, now 8, demonstrating with his hands. ...

"This is where they hammered a nail into my leg and then they pulled it out," he says, lifting up his pant leg to show a tiny wound.

He says his captors also pulled out each of his tiny fingernails, broke both his arms, and beat him repeatedly on the side of the head with a shovel. He still suffers chronic headaches. He remembers them laughing as they inflicted the pain.

Compared to this, waterboarding is child's play. Sleep deprivation, no matter the length, is not in the same category as the least of these barbarous acts.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/...boy/index.html

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

Just a little reminder of what real torture looks like:



Compared to this, waterboarding is child's play. Sleep deprivation, no matter the length, is not in the same category as the least of these barbarous acts.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/...boy/index.html

Tex once again with the "but what he did was worse!" defense. Has that ever worked for you?

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

Tex once again with the "but what he did was worse!" defense. Has that ever worked for you?

The anti-waterboarding folks have diluted the meaning of what real torture is.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

The anti-waterboarding folks have diluted the meaning of what real torture is.

Diluted? Was the definition of torture so pure and wholesome to you that it should never be expanded upon?

"Diluted" is clearly the wrong word. What anti-waterboarding folks did was appropriately encompass purely evil and malicious behavior within the definition of torture, lest we lose our moral compass.

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

Diluted? Was the definition of torture so pure and wholesome to you that it should never be expanded upon?

"Diluted" is clearly the wrong word. What anti-waterboarding folks did was appropriately encompass purely evil and malicious behavior within the definition of torture, lest we lose our moral compass.

No, dilute is the right word.