Comments on: GORDON DUFF: BEING HONEST ABOUT TORTURE http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/02/06/being-honest-about-torture/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=being-honest-about-torture Military Veterans and Foreign Affairs Journal - VA - Veterans Administration Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:16:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: foxchaser http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/02/06/being-honest-about-torture/comment-page-1/#comment-10655 foxchaser Sat, 07 Feb 2009 12:26:15 +0000 http://127.0.0.1/?p=4713#comment-10655 OUHRAH Gunny! Someone needs to wake the hell up! The Spy business has gotten ugly and need to be sent back to the Right people who now what they are doing and how to do it right, without any public interference. Fine close Guitmo but put the prisoners somewhere else like of the coast on an old aircraft carrier or some secret island. thefoxchaser OUHRAH Gunny! Someone needs to wake the hell up! The Spy business has gotten ugly and need to be sent back to the Right people who now what they are doing and how to do it right, without any public interference.
Fine close Guitmo but put the prisoners somewhere else like of the coast on an old aircraft carrier or some secret island.
thefoxchaser

]]> By: duffster http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/02/06/being-honest-about-torture/comment-page-1/#comment-10628 duffster Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:13:34 +0000 http://127.0.0.1/?p=4713#comment-10628 <p>As someone who has on odd occasion had to "talk to" people about "issues" I know that what we are doing is idiotic.</p><p>Coddling assholes is hardly a good idea but torturing tourists and aid workers, as we have been doing, is criminal.</p><p>g</p> As someone who has on odd occasion had to "talk to" people about "issues" I know that what we are doing is idiotic.

Coddling assholes is hardly a good idea but torturing tourists and aid workers, as we have been doing, is criminal.

g

]]> By: Thomas Michael Barnes http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/02/06/being-honest-about-torture/comment-page-1/#comment-10626 Thomas Michael Barnes Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:16:11 +0000 http://127.0.0.1/?p=4713#comment-10626 I am not a guy who is for torture. Christ, I am a left wing Democrat. But I have lived in the world and I know that there evil, ugly and incredibly dangerous people out there. And we have tough guys to deal with them because these evil people hate us and would destroy us in a pair of seconds with even half a chance at success. Spies kill people and yes, spies torture people. I don't like it. I wish it were not so, but that is what spies do and also elite military units, and in foreign countries, the famous "paramilitaries" that the Associated Press is so fond of interviewing. All countries have tough guys who do this for a living. Unfortunately, if countries did not have these guys, they would not be countries for very long. With all this said, what do we do about torture? I don't have an answer. But I would say this. There is beating the hell out of a suspected terrorist to get information, then there is crushing his testicles. There is making a sweep into a poor neighborhood overseas, picking up the mother of a terrorist, bringing her to the local police station and having her call her son on the phone to tell him where she is. And then there is going to her home and killing her. There is rounding up poor, illiterate Muslims in a jihadist school and incarcerating them while you re-educate them as to the realities of life in the Western World, and then there is shooting all three hundred of them in cold blood. There is attempting in some sort of Judeo-Christian manner to deal with Wahabist Islamist haters who want us all dead, and then there is destroying half the Middle East with American high tech weapons. The choice is always ours. I have no ready answer. There are millions of people out there who would just as soon see America and Americans slip into the ocean and die. That is a fact. Just travel overseas sometime. But that does not mean we have a right to go around killing people because of some ideological bent , some Manifest Destiny fever that we still have and have updated into the 21st Century. People hate us, and some of them have very good and solid reasons to hate us. Let there be no doubt in your mind, we are not Boy Scouts. We have done an awful lot of lousy, evil things in the name of "democracy" and "free trade" and "republican ideals". I mean republican in the sense of our republic, not in the sense of the Republican Party. But that does not mean I am willing to allow myself to be destroyed by a force equally as ambiguous and equally as wrong as me and mine. I want to survive, whether I am sometimes wrong or not. And for that, you need spies and special forces and amphibious borne light infantry and an aggressive State Department that never quits. We need to recapture a sense of realistic views of who we are and what we can realistically accomplish in the world. We need to put our Bush Era views of Manifest Destiny behind us. If we keep going down that path, we will destroy ourselves and everyone us along with us. CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.) I am not a guy who is for torture. Christ, I am a left wing Democrat. But I have lived in the world and I know that there evil, ugly and incredibly dangerous people out there. And we have tough guys to deal with them because these evil people hate us and would destroy us in a pair of seconds with even half a chance at success. Spies kill people and yes, spies torture people. I don’t like it. I wish it were not so, but that is what spies do and also elite military units, and in foreign countries, the famous “paramilitaries” that the Associated Press is so fond of interviewing. All countries have tough guys who do this for a living. Unfortunately, if countries did not have these guys, they would not be countries for very long. With all this said, what do we do about torture?

I don’t have an answer. But I would say this. There is beating the hell out of a suspected terrorist to get information, then there is crushing his testicles. There is making a sweep into a poor neighborhood overseas, picking up the mother of a terrorist, bringing her to the local police station and having her call her son on the phone to tell him where she is. And then there is going to her home and killing her. There is rounding up poor, illiterate Muslims in a jihadist school and incarcerating them while you re-educate them as to the realities of life in the Western World, and then there is shooting all three hundred of them in cold blood. There is attempting in some sort of Judeo-Christian manner to deal with Wahabist Islamist haters who want us all dead, and then there is destroying half the Middle East with American high tech weapons. The choice is always ours.

I have no ready answer. There are millions of people out there who would just as soon see America and Americans slip into the ocean and die. That is a fact. Just travel overseas sometime. But that does not mean we have a right to go around killing people because of some ideological bent , some Manifest Destiny fever that we still have and have updated into the 21st Century. People hate us, and some of them have very good and solid reasons to hate us. Let there be no doubt in your mind, we are not Boy Scouts. We have done an awful lot of lousy, evil things in the name of “democracy” and “free trade” and “republican ideals”. I mean republican in the sense of our republic, not in the sense of the Republican Party. But that does not mean I am willing to allow myself to be destroyed by a force equally as ambiguous and equally as wrong as me and mine. I want to survive, whether I am sometimes wrong or not.

And for that, you need spies and special forces and amphibious borne light infantry and an aggressive State Department that never quits. We need to recapture a sense of realistic views of who we are and what we can realistically accomplish in the world. We need to put our Bush Era views of Manifest Destiny behind us. If we keep going down that path, we will destroy ourselves and everyone us along with us.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)

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