Subject: torture
You are wrong wrong wrong about torture. It is never ok.
I believe most statements with "never" in them are illogical.
Is it never OK to shoot a man in a policeman's
uniform?
What
if it's an excaped convict,
stealing your 9 year-old daughter from her bad?
Then it's OK to shoot him, right?
See how "never" gets in the way?
Is it never OK to chew the flesh of your
dead friend?
What
if you're stranded in a
blizzard for weeks and your choices are cannibalism or death?
Then it's OK to eat him, right?
See how "never" gets in the way?
Your scenario never happens in the real world, so it is the excuse for Bush and buddies to torture.
There you go again with the "never."
If it never happened, I would never
condone torture - it's that simple.
If your case exists, your guy can torture and be morally right, but still have to pay for violation of the law.
...and ten million lives would be saved.
If a secret service man can take a bullet for the Prez, then your hero can take time for the nation/world.
What?
If the bomb is ticking, he should "take
time?"
I'd be worried if I always agreed with you,
man.
Keep on swinging.
ST
Subject: torture
You think torture is cool one percent of
the time? Go to hell.
Desmo
Desmo, like the others, you're arguing with someone besides me.
I never said "Torture is cool."
I said if
a slap would save 10,000,00 lives, I'd condone it.
Apparently you'd let 10,000,000 people die to protect the terrorist
from a slap?
Aren't you taking dove-ism to a wild extreme?
If you have to change what I said to disagree,
doesn't that mean you agree with what I really said?
I think that makes you the torturer
Shame, shame on Desmo the torturer.
Subject: torture
Bart, you wrote...
<Why can't people understand that "on the rarest of occasions" means "on the rarest of occasions"
#3 Because it's not happening, on "rare
occasions", it's now being done all the friggin time, dude!
Your little fantasy
is like T.V. it isn't real! Your "facts" aren't factual. You're arguing
a fantasy!
Which makes me
question your ability to be real...See here in the real world, folks are
being
seriously tortured,
not just "slapped". So why do you bring up being slapped? That's assault.
A trivial side
issue. Are you trying to downplay this whole torture scandal? Why?
Dude, with whom are you arguing?
I never said "Torture is rare."
Why do you think I said that?
Why would you fabricate a quote and put my name on it?
Yes, one of us is having difficulty with reality and the English language.
Sidebar: Could somebody with a clear
head and a lack of passion explain to me
why people have to change what I wrote so they can scream insults my way?
If I write something crazy I expect people to write and
straighten me out.
But why fabricate some nonsense and then lose your head over
claiming that I said that?
Are the letters re-arranging themselves on your monitor to form
other words?
If so, I can't be held responsible for what you think
you're reading.
I just read how watching t.v. makes people
dumb...you are a big t.v. advocate, aren't you bart?
Best Regards,
Rob
Oh, you got me, there.
I'll plead guilty to being dumb all day.
Subject: Torture is never okay
There is no guarantee that in the small
but infinitesimal case where
there is urgency that torture will achieve
the desired result.
True, but that bomb is
guaranteed to go off in a few hours.
You'd let the 10,000,000 people die because saving them wasn't
guaranteed up-front?
The ticking bomb hypothetical is exactly
that - a hypothetical.
It was crafted for the explicit purpose
of creating in the public's minds an allowance
for any torture because after all, who
knows, there might have been a ticking bomb.
No, at least not in my case and in my scenario, I get to decide.
Here's how it's supposed to work:
I say, "Would you agree to let me slap a guy to save 10,000,000
lives?"
...and you're supposed to say, "Obviously
I'd want to save 10,000,000 lives."
From there -
we would argue further, but we never got the chance because the dove factor
seems to have run so totally amuck to the extent that most e-mail
responders would gladly
sacrifice 10,000,000 lives for the "slapping is bad principle"
and that makes no fucking sense at all.
Ten million lives weighed against a single slap, and the doves
vote to kill the 10 million people?
You might as well say you're opposed to
smothering babies 99% of the time because after all,
what if a baby is suffering, about to die
and its being smothered and eaten will save the life of another?
Absurd? You bet. I rest my
case.
Did you see the last MASH episode?
In that show, they "proved" that sometimes smothering
a baby is the right thing to do.
In the MASH case, a baby had to be smothered to
save a whole bus full of people.
That robbed Hawkeye of his sense of humor, then they said "Goodbye"
and closed the show forever.
In trying to be smug, you proved my point for me.
Is smothering babies wrong?
Yes, in all but the most rare and severe cases,
but in the last MASH, smothering that baby saved 20 lives.
If you need to, blame me for that, too.
Subject: You are one stubborn son of a . . . gun that is
Bart:
You keep getting your head handed to you on this
torture debate
and I am not sure why you keep holding your position.
Maybe you are enjoying being tortured?
In my mind, the debate has never started.
People tend to set themselves on fire just before
weighing in on the subject.
I've give a dollar to someone who could debate
this subject without the hysterics, the wild-ass hyperbole
and wacked-out personal attacks that misrepresent
everything I've said on the subject.
For debate purposes, could I or you imagine a
scenario where it may be
morally justified to torture someone, sure, for
debate purposes.
You mean besides the handful we've been kicking
around for the last couple of months?
I think some people check in weekly or whatever
and they want to re-start the non-debate
from the beginning and there's not enough time
to re-start it for each individual.
I have never, never, however, heard of an instance
where torture was justified from the
circumstances that were present when the needles
began being inserted into the quicks of peoples fingernails.
Maybe those circumstances are rare, and not everyday
occurences?
There's a difference between "eager to torture"
and "time leaves us no other choice."
Bart, you rail against the insanity of the Catholic
church, yet you are glued
to the position that torture can
in some way be justified? Maybe you would
have done well in the era of Torquemada and the
Inquisition.
Good and bad in the same paragraph - at least
that's progress.
Torture isn't always justified and I never said
it was.
Can torture be justified?
Sure.
The example I've been using is IF
a single slap to the face
would make a certainly-guilty terrorist talk,
would you allow that if it meant getting the
location of the terrorist h-bomb in Manhattan which would
result in saving the lives of 10,000,000 people
in one day?
The doves say no.
The doves (apparently) would sacrifice New York
to prevent that single, horrifying, immoral slap.
That's pure insanity, and that's why I'm sticking
to the sane side of this argument.
I seem to be the last sane man on the subject.
Maybe your Torquemada quip was meant to be humorous,
but most "you love torture"
accusations
being hurled at me aren't jokes. People are dead
serious about that slap being worse than 10M murders.
Now, only Republicans justify torture.
Are you really a Republican?
Bob in San Diego
Bob, yes, the 1513 anti-GOP issues are just a smokescreen...
Subject: torture argument fools
Bart:
I noticed you didn't try to argue with my little
'Bart as the anti-bush terrorist' argument
which demonstrated the futility of torture.
As long as your opponents accept your premise
that torture works, you have an easy win.
I can't believe some people say torture doesn't
work.
The Pentagon says it works, but what do they
know about fighting battles, right?
Can I take your silence as an admission of my victory?
ha ha
--joe in Japan
P.S. just tryin' to get your goat there.
You've put so many restrictions on legit usage
that the argument is practically moot anyway.
I wish some of the knuckle-heads sending you
mail would wake-up to that fact.
Joe, good point.
When I give the perimeters in which I'd allow torture, people say,
"That
would never happen,"
then they scream at me for being torture-happy. That makes
no sense, but I understand because
when people see the letters t,
o, r, t, u, r, and
e in succession, their brain
stops working and they fall
into some kind of foggy, auto-pilot where no
logic or facts are allowed - then they start typing and hit "send."
I wonder why people lose their heads when certain subjects come up?
If this was a POW page, and half my readers had been victims of
torture, I could understand strong feelings
that may or may not be logic-based, but what could explain the screaming-meemie
mail I've been getting?
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