Is Obama hurting the Democratic Party by not joining forces with Hilla

[Occhidiangela]

This is not just my opinion, proferred in a vacuum. John McCain seems to be pretty convinced, and he seems like the kind of person who'd know.

He's also smart enough to know the distinctions, and degrees.

What definition of "torture" are you considering that excludes this?

And why do you have to play with definitions in order to include this method into your broad definition? Why is that so important to you? I see a clumsy artist with a broad brush.

Because, unless you're making the argument that "one of the finest mind___'s of all time" doesn't constitute severe mental pain or suffering,

That isn't torturre, unless you go out of your way to redefine it as such. Funny, that it is so often in the

POLITICAL

realm that words are strained and redefined for a

POLITICAL

purpose. You are as bad as the Bush crowd with this, and you won't even recognize it.

it seems to fit into any definition I've ever seen, except the absurdly self-serving ones the US has been coming up with recently, specifically engineered to exclude the kinds of torture they'd like to use.

Who is "the US" who you are talking about? Are all us nigrahs down heah in the lowah foaty eigh lookin' so much alike that you caint tell the difference between us?

You might have a care and pay attention to just who is for, and who is not, as it is a matter of considerable disagreement down here in the lowah 48.

Are you saying that I would be surprised at the things that have historically been done to people? That I haven't learned the horrors we've inflicted on each other? If that is the case, then no, I'm not "willing to admit" (a specious formulation, similar to "did you enjoy beating your wife?") that.

Can you tell me why the year 2008 shoudl be any different from 1961 or 1950, or 1973?

Human beings haven't changed a bit, some people only pretend that they have.

By all means, play the same games Bush plays, monkey around with definitions regardless of what is going on. A criminal mastermind, KSM, is being given the stick. And damned well he should. What isn't happening is some daily waterboarding regimen for any and all who got dragged into the box.

Is there any reason that KSM should be treated with kindness? We are dealing with one of Hoffer's True Believers there.

But please, do go on. Shrill adherence to principle is a useful point of view for esoteric mental musing, or hypotheticals designed to test logic.

Now, if three people (or let's guess thirty, I suspect the director was being less than frank) have been waterboarded in the past five years, and there have been over a thousand through the gates of Gitmo, I still want to know where your broad brush arrives at some sort of meaningful position.

All I can see is another adherent to this great gnashing of teeth: you confuse mind games with torture, which is physical abuse and body breaking, and had been that simple a thing until the political rhetoric of recent vintage leapt into redefinitions.

Your hands are as dirty (rhetoricaly) as the Bush gang's. Congratulations. You can take your arbitrary reclassification and go fish.

Am I happy that the state of play has arrived as it has? Not in the least. Too many pages to go into that.

Or are you implying that there was some point at which the valiant Jack Bauers of history really did save the world through torture? If that's the argument, then no, I don't really "know much about" that. What would be an example? Usually when societies degenerate to using torture, their purposes are about as virtuous as their methods.

Your Jack Bauer tripe you may eat for breakfast, Mister Strawman. That is not my position, but you of course use that standard canard to apply a sound byte to my position, which you cannot pigeon hole. God knows, you'd like to try.

Attributed. The closest it gets is a critique of trendy liberal pacifism, where he says something kind of similar. But if you think Orwell would be defending this foolish war and the unlawful imprisonment and torture of suspects in the name of "fighting terrorism," then I don't think you understand much about George Orwell.

Did I say Orwell would defend this war?

No.

You did.

Go argue with yourself, if you like.

Although one might quote Orwell on this topic for other reasons, notably what it does to a nation when torture is dressed up in fancy language to make it more acceptable.

Fancy language?

If you want to call the over emotive horsecrap that has erupted, in critcism of, and in support of, W's various takes and mistakes as "fancy language," you had better look at that glass house before you toss a pebble. See your Jack Bauer horsecrap above for a single example.

Well they should be. It is neither ethical nor sensible. Panicked people tell whatever lies they need to stop the overwhelming sensation of imminent drowning.

No kidding?

Now, tell me how much that has to do with ripping teeth out of people, breaking their bones, on a whim, or beating them to death?

See also the rope treatment.

Your emotional desire to conflate that trick, which is a brutal HEY JESTER, I HAVE REPEATED MYSELF HERE, AS I AGAIN I CALL IT BRUTAL, ARE YOU ACTUALLY READING WHAT I WRITE? (and a mighty effective one, one surmises) with the physical body breaking people like McCain, Stockdale, McDaniel, and hundreds of others put up with.

Fine. Then as far as I'm concerned, and as far as John McCain is concerned, you are condoning torture.

As far as I am concerned, you make the argument of an idiot if you cannot decipher that the matter of degree isn't of interest. My position is that KSM, and the handfull of animals like him who are ever caught, do not deserve any extension of courtesy by anyone who catches them. They are beyond outlaw. The bulk of people rounded up are not in his league. Funny, the bulk are not treated like that.

Think on that.

Or, pretend it's all the same, because it is convenient for you to do so.

Nor can I find anything to respect in your pretense that sleep deprivation is torture. It's another fine mind hump that I got to experience, thankfully for a very short period of time, in a controlled training environment.

The shortcoming of your position is its emotional, politics driven base, rooted in a lazy desire to pretend that one thing is identical to another.

Gee, let's hear another song in the same key.

Spanking a child with a couple of smacks across the buttocks is the same as beating him and breaking bones, ITS ALL CHILD ABUSE.

I've been exposed to new age crap for long enough to recongnize it for what it is: rubbish.

Nuts hooked up to the car battery, hands and limbe broken or removed, no, that is not the same as water boarding. You don't win a prize. Are you so eager to leap on that little sound byte that you can't tell the difference?

The fact that there are degrees of coercion matters, just as degrees of punishment matter in jurisprudence.

The death penalty is not the same as a three year jail sentence, but both are PUNISHMENT!

OH Horror!

So too with your "it's all as horrible as the rest, since I call it torture." Are you feeling faint yet?

f you can sleep with that, good on you. As you rightly point out, it is not being done in my name. It is being done in yours.

If it were a common place, which is the insinuation that is too often made, I'd feel differently about it.

I cannot respect your position of the excluded middle, nor your pretense that it is all the same.

While it is distasteful for me to use such academic asshattery for terminology, I figured I'd serve you some of the tripe you wished to have for dinner here.

Happy?

I do make exception for special cases. KSM is a special case.

So did Abe Lincoln, when he curbed certain Constitutional provisions. Are you sorry we ended slavery down here Jester, by killing half a million of one another? Lincoln violated strict principle to do so. Damnit, Jester, the US really screwed up on that one.

Is there a danger that handling special cases may lead to worse?

Hell yes.

That's what bugs me.

You shoot the rabid dog, but do you then get in the habit of shooting all dogs? From the above, we see that friend Jester would pretend the answer to that is yes, being blinded by an emotional, political desire and a handy, politically convenient, label.

But we both know it does not necessarily follow.

Occhi