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Jon on John, Stewart on Yoo
Jan 13th, 2010 | 60 responses
Jon Stewart apparently felt the sting of critics of his Monday night interview (here and here) of John Yoo, who authored many of the Bush administration’s torture memos while serving as deputy assistant attorney general in the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel.
In the opening to last night’s show, Stewart essentially cops to the critique, “I was going to nail him… It was like interviewing sand… He got me. You know, I’ll bounce back. I’ve certainly done worse.”
Kevin Drum says Stewart was woefully unprepared:
Yoo’s argument was, plainly, about what counts as torture. Stewart didn’t get that — or pretended not to get that, I’m not sure which — and that led him to continually act surprised by perfectly ordinary statements from Yoo. [...]
The real problem with interviewing Yoo is this: once you start arguing about the legal basis of the president’s wartime powers you’ve pretty much lost the game. That’s a subject that’s genuinely complex, and a guy like Stewart will never win an argument about that with a guy like Yoo. He’ll just toss out yet another precedent and plow on.
The debate really needed to be about the fundamentals: Stewart needed to graphically describe all the things that were done — multiple waterboardings, sleep deprivation, head slamming, stress positions, etc. — and get Yoo to defend those as permissible. And when he retreated into legalisms, he should have asked Yoo whether he, personally, agreed with his own legal position. That’s a fair question for an author on a book tour.
Adam Serwer at The Prospect details the mistakes:
Stewart allowed Yoo to claim that Abu Zubayda was the “number 3 in al-Qaeda,” a claim which is factually untrue. Yoo claimed that his memos allowed the government to “go up to the line” of what was torture, but in practice with Zubayda and others the line was crossed repeatedly. The experiences of the detainees who were shackled, in stress positions, had their head thrown into walls, and were doused with cold water were far different than the sanitized, clinical descriptions in the memos. He never asked Yoo whether he thought Zubayda being stuffed in a box to the point that his gunshot wounds reopened was “well beyond the line.” Stewart allowed Yoo to claim the U.S. had never really considered what is and isn’t torture, despite the fact that the U.S. statute against torture was very clearly violated by Yoo’s recommendations and that waterboarding had been prosecuted as a crime as recently as 1983.
Stewart never confronted Yoo on the question of how the torture regime, reverse engineered from training meant to help soldiers resist torture, could possibly not be torture. Stewart never even contested the idea that torture was effective, despite the high-profile declaration of FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan that he personally extracted all of the useful information from Zubayda prior to his being tortured. When Stewart asked Yoo whether the president could electrify someone’s testicles, Yoo knew how to answer the question — having previously implied that it would be okay for the president to order a child’s testicles crushed because, “it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that.” This time he shook his head. No, no, never something so barbaric.
Stewart allowed Yoo to maintain the illusion that he was a good faith actor simply doing his job, rather than someone who had deliberately distorted the facts in order to justify the unjustifiable. After being outmaneuvered for nearly 30 minutes, Stewart grudgingly admitted that he was “not very equipped to handle the discussion.” It was a sobering reminder that for years, a mostly pliant press has allowed a comedian to do a reporters’ job. Yesterday, we were reminded how inadequate a solution that really is.
Serwer points to Spencer Ackerman for more. Ezra Klein called it a predictable shuddering disappointment:
[H]is guests come armed to rebut, and they have more experience defending themselves than Stewart has attacking them. At this point, Stewart is doing more harm than good by giving people whom he thinks are liars and frauds a platform on his show.
Andrew Sullivan has a bit of a different take:
[Yoo's] conservative defense of an executive branch with no limits to its powers at home or abroad is, well, as gob-smacking as it always has been. It is not, of course, a conservative argument at all. In its implications – in a war defined as unending and an executive defined as all-powerful – are proto-fascist: Jacksonianism with a waterboard.
I came away from the exchange, wondering if Yoo just isn’t that smart, as well as shockingly ignorant of history, and morality. Maybe he was off his game.
60 Responses to “Jon on John, Stewart on Yoo”
OF course Yoo is just another of that breed of Americans who don't understand, appreciate, or respect the high standards this country worked so hard (not always succeeding, but not caving either) to develop as integral to it's moral foundation. That doesn't mean he doesn't believe in the extreme moral relativism he's embraced, but along with Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and others of that persuasion he has done America no favors. In otherwords, this is more dumbing down, more lowering of standards, etc. Too bad Stewart wasn't in skewering mode, but karma will catch up with people like John Yoo one day.
It is sad that we are relying on a comedian to call these people to task.
I have an idea. What we need is a group of professionally trained interviewers who research and have a grasp of the issues involved. They would be able to ask questions that prevent these people from lying repeatedly. We could call them journalists since no one currently uses the name.
Or we could have lawyers investigate them to see if they have committed crimes.
You don't lose the moral high ground when these people behave badly. You lose it when you let them get away with it.
Short of being a REAL news hound, John Stewert does a service for us all when he helps to expose the irrelevance of mass media (he could likely find things to point out about TMV), as out of touch, and insensitive, if not downright bias. AND he helps us to laugh at the incredible disconnect, no small thing. I give him the benefit of the doubt, even though in this case and many others, he is likely not the best man to expose wrongdoing and corruption. Moreover, he is able to admit, confess without torture, that he was in over his head, something you won't find in swollen news anchorland. The Tucker Carlsen interview will forever be a highlight of my watching years.
“You don't lose the moral high ground when these people behave badly. You lose it when you let them get away with it.”
Great comment!
Yoo stands firmly on the moral high ground by seeking to prevent the death of innocent civilians from the actions of mass murderers within the framework of the Rule of Law.
Far from the fire breathing demon who pulls the wings off butterflies as a hobby that some have tried to falsely caricature, Yoo turns out to be a genuinely nice guy with a sharp legal mind tempered by common sense. Americans owe him a debt of gratitude for his stellar legal work on behalf of the country, and quite possibly some of us owe him our lives. Yoo merits consideration as a future Justice on the SCOTUS if he has the kind of depth and versatility he has displayed thus far.
Stewart thought he'd be arguing with the guy in good faith. I'm not sure he knows how to respond when the interviewee PRETENDS to be arguing in good faith, all while outright lying or making stuff up. If he had known, in advance, what Yoo would be lying about, he could have called him on it. But in this case, you would need someone who is strongly familiar with all the legal precedents involved to be able to point out Yoo's disgusting lies. I agree it would have been much better if he had detailed the torture and badgered Yoo into saying what he thought about the morality of his own legal positions.
I couldn't disagree more.
In other words Stewart should have just made an emotional appeal using visual aids rather than logic and rational discourse. Stewart could have ranted and raved about being on the moral high ground, waving pictures of unhappy terrorists, while Yoo tried to explain the legal framework of the situation. ok
Stewart has been and probably always will be terrible at interviewing politicians. His great strength in interviewing is railing against the media. It's cause he is a part of it and knows more about it and what he thinks it should do. And part of that is that he thinks they should be conducting interviews with people like Yoo. He just has a hard time doing it.
DaMav continues to side with those who oppose humane treatment and rules of law that we ourselves fought for. The following is from a thread here a few months ago.
There is considerable detail about what is torture, and waterboarding is covered. That's according to an American court and Americans have been convicted of torture for using it.
“Ronald Reagan's Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.
Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case – which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later – was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.
The failure to cite the earlier waterboarding case and a half-dozen other precedents that dealt with torture is reportedly one of the critical findings of a Justice Department watchdog report that legal sources say faults former Bush administration lawyers – Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury – for violating “professional standards.”
But let's take an open and shut case that was used MUCH more than waterboarding. Sound levels played at the pain threshold permanently damages hearing. “Organ damage” is spelled out specifically in the Geneva Conventions and in our own laws banning torture. Threats of death or dismemberment are clearly torture. Threatening one's loved ones is clearly torture. And of course shoving a broom handle up someone's ass is torture, as is hanging them by the wrists until they die. All of these were done. Some died of hyporthermia, naked, wet, shivering, alone. All of these were the result of an administration policy that encouraged our soldiers to “get tough” and “soften them up”.
That's what you support DaMav. Pathetic. I pity you the loss of your humanity.
I have never favored or defended waterboarding to get “confessions”. You are missing the point of the whole argument. This isn't about getting confessions, but getting actionable intelligence which can be used to save lives in the future.
Waterboarding to get confessions or when used as a means of punishment is morally wrong.
Waterboarding and other aggressive forms of questioning are intended not to convict, but to prevent. There is no contradiction at all with the Texas case you cited.
I'm quite comfortable being one of the many Americans who feel it is more important to save innocent lives than to inflate our own egos by doing nothing and thereby claiming moral superiority because by doing nothing we have done no wrong.
Fair enough. And when those outrages are carried out on our troops, you will be on the side of the demons, not the angels. Congratulations.
Reciprocity is a rational, not a moral argument. And it is worth considering.
However I am highly skeptical that al Qaeda or most of the rest of the murderous thugs on the other side give a hoot about it. I doubt that they say, “You know, America hasn't waterboarded our guys so let's be nice to this prisoner.” I just see no evidence of that at all, and plenty of evidence against it. And even in the highly speculative and unlikely event that it had some salutary effect on how our troops would be treated if captured, it begs the question on preventing innocent civilian deaths through extraction of intelligence.
Perhaps a comedian interviewing a lawyer seems like a fair “debate” to some. It is show business, just like professional wrestling. To me, it is just an opportunity for the comedian to crack jokes and make the lawyer look silly. Any, surprise, the lawyer, even if he is not a litigator, who is trying to sell books after all, acts, well like a lawyer. This guy isn't a politician so he can't lie with impunity as an interviewed politician would do. NO, I am not for waterboarding. I ,am, for common sense and reasonable investigative and intelligence methods to protect our country and every liberal's loved ones from killers.
I would be more concerned with future enemies like say China, or Europe or whoever our future enemies are. We will not always be fighting al qaeda but our loss of those rules will be noted by our future enemies whether we like the idea or not and I doubt they will take “but that was just for those guys” as an excuse. I can't blame them it sounds like a pre-teens argument instead of a legal one. My guess is that prior to any real saber rattling they will pull out of the Geneva Convention's citing the US and other nations that play fast and loose with the spirit of the treaties. We are a long way from the nation that was the worlds savior now though. See the main problem with torture is how do you know they are guilty and deserve it? If you are not sure you are possibly torturing innocent men and women which would make us…immoral. I have problems with torture in general I will admit but that last issue is the sticking point I can't get passed, we are potentially torturing innocent men and or women and this is supposed to be acceptable and not a barbaric act. Yea right.
“I am highly skeptical that al Qaeda or most of the rest of the murderous thugs on the other side…”
They're not ON the other side, DaMav. They're on your side; the side of torture regimes who deny the international laws that the American and Europeans pressed for and which most countries subscribe to.
Intelligence officials agree that these methods do NOT produce good results. Indeed they were devised (way back in the Inquisition) and perfected (by the Viet Cong and N. Koreans) to produce false confessions. Not that I expect you to care, but if they're right, you are willing to sacrifice our values for nothing.
But this to me is not about whether or not such inhuman methods can be effective, nor is about what the worst regimes in the world do. It's about who WE are.
BTW, if there are any in your camp who believe themselves to be Christians, get real. Those who preach in direct opposition to the words of Christ are BY DEFINITION, the anti-Christ. Not for me to judge… nor for you.
A reasonable point TMSF. But it depends on China (or whomever) being unable to distinguish an un-uniformed terrorist organization from organized, uniformed national armies, and that distinction has already been made. Any war against another nation with standing armies is a completely different ball of wax, and I'm sure we are not the only ones sophisticated enough to recognize that.
yes, yes, I'm on the side of al Qaeda now, because I want to sleep deprive some terrorist to save the lives of civilians. Whatever
But this to me is not about whether or not such inhuman methods can be effective, nor is about what the worst regimes in the world do. It's about who WE are.
Exactly. That's what I have repeatedly tried to point out. You are willing to risk sacrificing numerous innocent lives just to have a higher opinion of yourself. You don't really care how many are killed as long as you can point out to everyone how clean your hands are. And congratulate yourself for being such an morally superior being. You nailed it. Bullseye.
The other side of that argument goes like this “they hated us for our freedoms and popularity so we handed them over in the interest of protecting ourselves and ruined our own global brand in the interest of saving ourselves from something that is less likely by order of magnitude than dying in a car crash.” For you I would guess Bush stood up and protected us with the patriot act, from my view a bully punched us in the nose and we decided to never walk that way to school again, meaning we are acting like cowards. If you fear dying in a terrorist attack don't move or live somewhere where one is likely to happen, much like if you fear being mugged you may want to buy a gun or again…move.
The one thing I find intriguing that I have not seen studied is how popular torture as an idea was prior to 911, if it became more popular our morality as a nation is dependent not on morals but convenience. Maybe it was always popular though and I missed the memo because even the hint of torture used to be something that would send American's into a panicky version of disgust, see Iran or China. I know this may seem odd but for many that are against torture they feel that their nations moral stance shifted because we were raised and taught a very different version of reality prior to 2000. “Keeping them up” also does not fall into the same area as say certain prison photos and water boarding, that is a total different animal.
Having said all of this my true stance goes as follows. Torture should always remain illegal because if not no abuse will be found to be inexcusable if the defendant can find an argument to gain sympathy(meaning if they are in the military brass, if you are a grunt we have already seen what happens to you when you are deemed “just a bad apple”). If confronted with a terrorist or someone that may know how to save lives that may otherwise be lost I would torture and expect a jury of my peers to judge if what I did was or was not the correct action in the circumstance. Making it legal makes it standardized. Keeping it illegal makes it a personal decision “do I believe this will save lives so much that I am willing to fall on my sword for my nation?” which is an honorable act.
Agree, TMSF. And the gaping hole in moral relativism is something you already pointed out. In almost every case, we simply DID NOT KNOW if prisoner X knew anything that would amount to “actionable intelligence.” If we're honest about it, the odds are long against it. So by using the “ticking time bomb” fallacy, we try to justify torturing the innocent by holding up what is simply not the fact about most of these prisoners. The blood of Dilmar is on the hands of those like DaMav. Dilmar was a taxi driver and there was not a shred of evidence at any time that he had “actionable intelligence.” He was tortured to death by Americans! He left a 22 year old widow and two children who will grow up without a father, an innocent man horribly TORTURED TO DEATH BY US.
BTW, DaMav, I am not trying to convince you of anything. My comments are for moral, ethical and humane people who are troubled by these issues.
Interesting. He meant it ironically, but it actually does put him on al Qaeda's side. Al Qaeda has been able to use and is still is using crimes like these as another tool to recruit more terrorists to kill Americans.
yes yes, the evil “Bush” Patriotic Act. The Dems have run Congress since 2007, and had Congress and the White House for the past year. How's that “Repeal the Evil Patriot Act” morality play working out?
Oh, here. Obama is pushing for renewal of the Patriot Act, now slated for February 2010.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/23-6
Good thing the 'immoral' Bush is out of there eh?
I'm relieved that you aren't trying to convince me because I haven't any idea who “Dilmar” is that you claim to know all about. Neither apparently does Google in the first fifty hits or so. Nor “Dilmar Torture”. Nor “Dilmar taxi”. For a guy who is such an expert on what somebody knows and doesn't know maybe you could start with the right name?
I'm guessing you mean Dilawar. Apparently beaten up during the early part of the Afghan War. Facts are disputed. Civil case may go to trial. Hey, aren't you supposed to use “alleged” torture or “suspected” torture when facts are in dispute? That's what we hear whenever someone claims the Christmas bomber is a terrorist.
I guess the high moral ground crowd doesn't bother extending such niceties to our own troops, just the enemy. Talk about moral relativism, tsk tsk.
Oh those evil evil lefties that pushed social security and medicare/caid on us but why didn't Reagan dismantle it or Nixon or Bush I and why did Bush II have to back away? Oh yea because once we give our rights to the gov they never give them back. It is a long running truth throughout our history but sure it just began in 2007. That is a mighty pretty straw man you have there but I am in no way defending the cowards on the left either but in this case it looks like you are because “it was needed.”
The patriot act will never go away my friend much like the CIA did not after the cold war. They just had to find a new enemy and now we have one and when they go away before we as a nation do anything crazy like giving the country back their rights and also bringing back the transparency of government we will, you guessed it, find a new enemy. Sorry for the tone but the tone of your response changed as well. We can all mock, debate is obviously a good deal more difficult. For the most part it is even purely academic as they will never give us back our rights nor will they stop torturing and doing anything extra-legal that they want. It is what they have done without question since WWII and it is what they will continue to do and every time you argue for it they think up something else to take away during the next “crisis” that they will be unable to defend us from. Sooner or later bad things happen and get through, but it is our choice as citizens whether or not we want to live that way for the rest of our lives because it never really comes back now does it?
Take MJ legalization, are we gaining new freedom if that passes? No, it will be tightly regulated and taxed to high heaven. If that is the only way to get it back to a personal choice(yes I know how far back it goes lol) I and many others will go along but we are buying it back from the gov, we are now renting that freedom if you will. The searches at airports will never go away, they will still be useful for controlling the population and therefore will be explained as an intelligent safety measure in the publics best interest.
I knew it was just a matter of time before torture apologism entered this thread. One of the reasons we try and maintain high standards in this country is so others will respect us. When that has been lost, our troops are in a great deal more danger than when we maintain high expectations. Knowing the difference between right and wrong isn't rocket science. When we choose to emulate the worst among us, we've lost more than you could imagine. You are what you do. You can't have it both ways.
If I may add:
If they can legally do it to others, they'll eventually be able to do it to us.
We've gotten better at information gathering. Torture still yields unreliable information.
You don't have to be a liberal to hate the (Orwellian) Patriot act, or to be repulsed by torture.
It's still unconstitutional.
You're trusting politicians to be reasonable and accurate in labeling people “terrorists”.
Yes, Dilawar. His true story was the Oscar best documentary of 2007 “Taxi to the Dark Side”
Disingenuous dissembling aside DaMav, we know and have abundant video and photographic evidence of the repulsive, illegal and perverted things our troops and agents used on often innocent prisoners. No “allegedly” about it. This is not about proving it in a court of law. This is about you supporting and calling for such abominations to be used regardless of whether we have proof of guilt, proof that a prisoner has “actionable intelligence”, regardless of whether our laws or international law are followed. I say it's wrong. You say I'm wrong because “innocent people could be killed” if we don't torture. Clear difference of opinion. Period.
Please explain how the moral high ground justifies torture. And no 24 Hours BS…
Sorry, the reply is to DaMav(d)…
There's nothing to explain Rudi. Either a person (or a country) has a moral compass or they don't. In the latter case it's possible to excuse almost anything… world history is full of that sort of thing. The good old US of A has always prided itself on it's solid character – something which is easier to tarnish than it is to re-build. Freedom is often described as requiring eternal vigilance. Well guess what, the same thing applies to morality.
GreenDreams – the enemy killed 3,000 civilians for what reason? would that be considered torture on multiple families – not to mention families wiped out on commercial airlines?
Al Qaeda does torture – no question about that – and they also behead people and bomb troops – but no outrage there?
“We're better than that” – maybe – but some people can live with thise decisions. Me – I don't know. If I saw the murderer that killed my freind on Sept 11th – I'm pretty sure I would have a huge moral delema – but if he taunts me with more threats of the same thing happening and the USA going down? I don't think my moral argument would stand a chance and I wouldn't have a problem with what happens. Mainly becasue I know he would do it and try and inflict more pain.
For the people that just picked random people and torture them – do I think that happened – yes – but they have their own moral issues to deal with and they don't have to answer to me – they answer to karma and the maker. Some have been brought up on charges and faced the music, some never will in military court – but they can't escape what they did.
If a few rouges (even say 100 or 1000) define 350 million Americans – that's a huge jump – then would a handfull of Al Qaeda define muslims as a whole? or maybe just Saudies? or Iranians?
You can't take a few and superimpose them as a whole. This country is good and just in nature. There are some bad apples. Always was and always will be.
If you choose to take them and see that as your country, I pity you. Whose the first country at a site of a natural disaster giving away billions every year for nothing in return? We have ships and supplies in Haiti now after an earthquake yesterday – they have nothing we want or need – we are there because we should be and we can be. There are more people that want to help than want to torture.
Cobbfan, the reason we have international law is that there will never be agreement about who is “the enemy” or “the evildoer” etc. To Iran, N. Korea and most places in the Middle East, we are “the enemy” and our actions are seen as killing not 3,000, but millions. Let me emphasize that this is NOT my viewpoint, but it is theirs. And rather than refute my point, you MAKE it. I AM outraged by the violence done by AQ and other criminal cabals. I want us to deal with them effectively. But throwing out our morals and abandoning our principles is NOT the way to do that.
We WANT torture of American soldiers to be illegal. It must not be acceptable for us to do either. “They broke the law first” is really weak. Furthermore, though I too would be conflicted about applying due process to someone who I SAW hurt a loved one, that's not what is happening here. We paid a ransom for “terrorists,” knowing that people were turning in their enemies or even strangers for the money. Then, having ZERO proof that they had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11 we kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured and in some cases murdered them. Most of the deplorable practices I have described were POLICY, not “a few bad apples,” and that includes the perverted acts for which we prosecuted Lindee England.
The rest of your response baffles me. You must think me an America hater or something. I KNOW Americans are basically good. And I know that in their fear they may say, do and support things that they would not when thinking clearly. For example, if it were YOU being told to shove a broom handle up the ass of a chained prisoner, pleading and bleeding, or urinate on her, you probably wouldn't do it. Yet here we are, allowing our sons and daughters to be taught to do depraved acts on people SUSPECTED of something, vaguely and usually without proof. My friend, that is wrong. Period. No matter what a group of terrorists did to us.
Please don't confuse us with gray facts, many above only see things in black or white.
I am a NYC resident, and am reminded of a very big torture that was planned for NY and NJ in 2006. Plotters, were planning to blow up a tunnel under the Hudson river, causing flooding of the Path trains and also the NYC subways and possibly the streets. It was stopped, and I can sleep a little better not being tortured by the thought of women and children screaming while drowning.
http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/PAT…
I would be more concerned with future enemies like say China, or Europe or whoever our future enemies are.”
Please name our potential enemies and their current methods. How do they compare with ours?
Yoo researched the question of what does and does not constitute torture, then gave his opinion to his client: POTUS.
Many on the left have a different opinion as to what constitutes torture.
How did a difference of opinion morph into demonizing Yoo as being motivated by nefarious intent? Some possible answers:
- it's a nuanced issue, and we citizens often do not do nuance well
- pain is an emotional issue: some persons organize their entire lives around avoiding pain; some persons abandon all reason when emotion enters the picture
- the issue was made into a political club with which to bash Bush: to some, bashing Bush was more important than the actual issue
- many on the left do not argue well: they only know ad hominem and tu quoque; it was a foregone conclusion that Yoo would be demonized
- many on the left have an entire psychological/narcissism thing going: they tell themselves they are pristinely virtuous, and allow no dissent to this fundamental organizing principle of their self image. It is, for such persons, inconceivable that someone could – in good conscience – oppose their reasoning about a matter of virtue. Therefore, on any matter which touches on virtue (and, arguably, every matter touches on virtue), anyone who opposes must have nefarious motive. Ergo, Yoo could not have a reasoned and different opinion, but must have nefarious motive.
I thought, above, that Kevin Drum had the right idea: the best way to interview Yoo is to ask him for specifics about why certain acts are or are not considered torture. These were the issues Yoo researched, and these were the recommendations Yoo made to Pres. Bush. It would be interesting to hear Yoo expound on his reasoning.
My overview of the Stewart interview: Stewart beclowned himself. It was hilarious. I was laughing. Entertainment. Stewart believed – before, during, and after – that Yoo had acted with nefarious intent. So strongly was Stewart committed to his opinion of nefarious intent that Stewart was unable to assimilate the simple reasoning Yoo proffered during the interview. It was cognitive dissonance writ large, and some of you in this comment thread also suffer from it. Neither you, not Jon Stewart, can wrap your heads around the possibility that Yoo researched the issue and gave opinions, and that you and Jon Stewart simply disagree with those opinions. It's nothing more dramatic than that.
I disagree. That's Yoo making stuff up. The waterboard, for example, was used by the Inquisition and Pol Pot. It is the centerpiece of the “torture museum” and everyone up until the Bush weasels attempted to justify their deplorable actions with “legal opinion.” We insisted that the LAWYERS who provided IDENTICAL cover to Hitler were prosecuted for war crimes along with 1) those who ordered it and 2) those who carried it out. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
Yup.
China is worse as it has been systemized. Europe on the other hand is dealing with the fallout of following our lead. Russia is worse and actually one of the places we learned these techniques from. Of course people do not normally surrender to the Russian's or Chinese for this reason though. They also find it hard to find people to offer intelligence that they are not bribing because the individuals know or should know that if their security apparatus gets their hands on them they will be tortured to make sure what is good and what is bad intelligence. So should we become more like China, Russia, Pakistan and the like and if we do why would we care to export such morality globally? It makes our calls for human rights look a bit silly or hypocritical which is a problem for our brand as we have learned over the last decade. Do not get me wrong the other side is not giving away puppies but we do not choose how they treat people we can only control how we do.
Your comment, written from a reasonable frame of mind, and in good intention, nevertheless is an instructive example of failing to address issues.
Re waterboarding: the question is not what was done in the past. And that's a good thing for you. It would be a mere matter of research to find examples of how American waterboarding differs from Pol Pot's waterboarding. For example: America trains her people, has a doctor on hand, has medical facilities nearby, and does not waterboard as a means of retribution or punishment.
Rather, the question specifically is: is waterboarding, as conducted by America, torture? To make this case, the specifics must be addressed with reasoning.
American waterboarding not physically torturous – either in terms of physical pain or in terms of lasting physical injury. Is there emotional pain? Psychic pain? If so, does emotional pain and/or psychic pain constitute torture? John Yoo has his opinion. If you wish to win the day, you must make your case via addressing the specifics (emotional/psychic pain = torture) with reasoning. Making a specific case, imo, is not easy. Many on the left posture as if making a convincing case against waterboarding is easy. I consider their posturing to be merely a method of avoiding the heavy intellectual lifting.
Re Yoo “making stuff up”
I agree that lawyers who give intentionally criminal legal advice deserve criminal punishment. I don't think you've made a convincing case that Yoo, in any specific instance, gave intentionally criminal legal advice.
Waterboarding=torture until Yoo decided it did not in the US. It is just that simple, as for a good deal of the rest of your cartoon of the left have fun with that but if that is how you view your fellow citizens I do not mind you hating them, it makes sense but just as much sense as those that scream fascist at right wingers and paint them with the same absurd brush.
I really enjoy hearing about how “the other side debates ad hominem” while you build them in the same comment, classic.
On the “emotion” thing. Who is acting emotionally, those that want to remain at the standards pre-911 or those that changed their minds and law? Anger, fear, rage and vengeance are emotions.
I would agree that both sides react emotionally to the issue for different reasons but painting one side that way at least leaves us no doubt of which side you stand on.
Waterboarding was defined as torture by the US military and they are trained on receiving and surviving that specific brand of torture. Which is why I am focusing on specifically water boarding. It was used by the Vietnamese and Japanese which is why we train to withstand it, yet it was not allowed to be used because it was deemed torture until re-defined.
As for the pain/terror involved if it is a walk in the park why did Hannity refuse to be waterboarded for charity after he promised to go through with it? Yea because it is a torture designed to convince a persons body that they are dying in the hope that this fear of death will illicit information.
Where do you find evidence for my “hating”? Your allegation of my “hating” comprises example #1 of reflexive ad hominem.
Re emotion and your allegation that I accused “one side”
If “some” persons abandoned reason re Yoo, it does not follow that I am accusing only the left of ever acting on emotion or abandoning reason.
You are failing to address the issue. None of your examples matter. What the U.S. Military thinks doesn't matter. What the Vietnamese and Japanese did or thought doesn't matter. What Hannity thinks doesn't matter.
Here's what matters: in your words, waterboarding is “designed to convince a persons body that they are dying”. Why does that constitute torture? If you wish to win the day, you must make the case.
Green Dreams, and much of left, believe John Yoo was intentionally making stuff up. To make the case that Yoo was intentionally making stuff up, you have to make a the case that “designed to convince a persons body that they are dying” constitutes torture, you have to make the case that Yoo could not have reasonably held a differing opinion.
“- pain is an emotional issue: some persons organize their entire lives around avoiding pain; some persons abandon all reason when emotion enters the picture
- the issue was made into a political club with which to bash Bush: to some, bashing Bush was more important than the actual issue
- many on the left do not argue well: they only know ad hominem and tu quoque; it was a foregone conclusion that Yoo would be demonized
- many on the left have an entire psychological/narcissism thing going: they tell themselves they are pristinely virtuous, and allow no dissent to this fundamental organizing principle of their self image. It is, for such persons, inconceivable that someone could – in good conscience – oppose their reasoning about a matter of virtue. “
The above is the cartoon I was describing.
“Making a specific case, imo, is not easy. Many on the left posture as if making a convincing case against waterboarding is easy. I consider their posturing to be merely a method of avoiding the heavy intellectual lifting”
Also above, I must have missed the part where you said Yoo abandoned reason but I also missed where you go after anything but “the left.” Above you also describe why some lefties react emotionally to the issue, in your opinion of course since I have never seen any studies that support that theory.
“Where do you find evidence for my “hating”? Your allegation of my “hating” comprises example #1 of reflexive ad hominem.”
I do understand that is why I was pointing out yours as well it is a fun game.
By the definition of torture, in a web dictionary and it fits every one of the below. For me to prove it further than that is to be forced to re-define the word itself which is not actually proving anything but moving the goal posts.
anguish: extreme mental distress
unbearable physical pain
agony: intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain; “an agony of doubt”; “the torments of the damned”
torment: torment emotionally or mentally
the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason; “it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safar…
Just so you know I do not think Yoo was making stuff up though, he was debating like a lawyer like Bill Clinton did but I would like to note that regardless of how Bill defined sex we all knew what happened and much the same goes for Yoo.
Sorry we have gone pretty far down the rabbit hole and I have not stated something I intended to. I do not see this as a right/left issue. The left used it as a club and the right used it to protect themselves(meaning it is ok because we are in charge/not ok because we are not in charge) but many on both sides would flip sides if the other party was in charge at the time and I fully admit that. My issue is with torture and re-defining things for convenience/fear.
re ad hominem:
I can easily expand on the reasoning behind my opinions/speculations. You admit you have no reasoning behind your allegation of hatred. I am conversing, am sharing my reasoning. You are trying to equate reasoning to lack of reasoning. Without saying so, maybe without even realizing it, you are arguing that intellectual discrimination is a bad or invalid thing.
Bill Clinton and parsing words:
We do not “all” know that Yoo gave intentionally illegal legal advice. I don't think he did. Da Mav doesn't think he did. Cobb Fan doesn't think he did. D Duck doesn't think he did. We believe Yoo acted with integrity and forthrightness.
Now, to your points about torture:
First, thank you for forthrightly taking up the challenge.
Second, as noted below, setting the bar on torture is a difficult and nuanced thing. IMO, it is easy to argue, as I do, that Yoo acted forthrightly in making such a difficult recommendation.
“anguish: extreme mental distress”
What constitutes torturous “extreme”? What of the Navy Seal training, or of other military training? At the least, this is a debatable point, and Yoo's opinion is possibly forthrightly different from yours (as opposed to Yoo's private opinion being the same as yours).
“unbearable physical pain”
waterboarding does not meet this criteria
“agony: intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain; “an agony of doubt”; “the torments of the damned”"
At the very least, the in context definitions of “intense”, “acute”, “agony”, and “of the damned” are debatable.
“torment: torment emotionally or mentally
the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason; “it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession” “
Same as above: these descrips, when it comes to making hard decisions, are also debatable.
Lastly, just to head some things off which might come up: b/c I suspect Yoo was acting forthrightly, I also say Yoo was not recommending that any techniques be used. Yoo, acting as the President's lawyer, was merely trying to draw a line between what is and is not torture. POTUS might have a host of additional reasons for using or for refusing to use any techniques – no matter which side of Yoo's line those techniques fall on.
Waterboarding, specifically, is illegal under US law. A sheriff in Texas (during the Reagan adminstration) and deputy were prosecuted and jailed for using it on a prisoner. Asked and answered by a court of law.
The rest of the emotional appeals here again support my case. The fact that a criminal planned to kill people, or that there was a conspiracy to do so in no way justify torturing or denying due process to any other individual. None of those in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib have any known connection to that act. So the illogic being applied here, I'm sorry to even have to point this out to you guys, is that because [brown person, Arab, foreigner] tried to commit a crime, other such persons can be tortured to see what they know.
So, a simple question for the torture proponents here. If you knew that you and your family will be subjected to any procedure of which you approve for others not proven either to have planned or committed a crime, or to have actionable intelligence, would you still stand by those as legal methods for such persons? What if you believed in Hell and that you would be going there for your advocacy of these barbaric methods? I'm certainly not the judge in these matters. You had better hope there is no judge of what you have believed in and supported.
“a rational motive for a belief or action”
Where did I state I was not using the above to inform my choices and opinions on the issue, sorry but either you are putting words into my mouth or I have misstated something so it would be nice if you would bring it to my attention. A good amount of my “reasoning” is based off of history specifically ours and as I noted WE considered it torture prior to 911. Defining ours as nice because we have a doctor in the room(who by the way is in every way violating the Hippocratic oath by doing and/or being part of doing harm) is a method also used by the USSR to show why they were different from Nazi Germany and I find both invalid arguments that may very well be legal but are little better than a Sophism argument to win a debate by muddying the pool. It changes nothing but whether you can be held accountable and whether you can rationalize that you did nothing wrong.
Also when did I say Yoo acted illegally? It will be difficult to find since I never said that nor took any similar position. Lawyers almost always act “legally” the quotes are because they often do so in a word parsing way that is in no way shape or form the spirit of the law but it is legal technically. Honorably and ethically are totally different issues but those are ones up for debate. I am debating torture and torture apologisim. I have reasoning behind it though for some reason you do not or do not wish to see it.
You ask for what makes it torture and I gave you that but now we are defining what pain and agony is, which tells me you did not like my answer which is the very definition of the word. Before that you noted that it may have been used in the US before yet when I noted that this was called torture when training US troops for Nam and also that it was called torture when SEALS were trained to withstand it we shift to how our version is “brand new and different.” Not only do I not see that it is different, I really do not care if it is. If it fits the definition of torture it should not be done under a legal shield. I am having trouble trying to figure out what you are actually debating, do you wish to prove Yoo is only not a criminal? That is easy, his opinion was made of words, words are protected by free speech therefore no crime was committed and he did not point out a law to be broken either. You seem to be spinning all the way back to “waterboarding is not torture therefore the US does not torture” which is a lie by the definitions of the words involved. I will not bother playing the redefining of words game since it goes nowhere. We both know what we are speaking of and about and why. Word parsing and changing definitions is an act of desperation or Sophism neither of which do I look upon kindly.
Just so you know I do not think Yoo was making stuff up though, he was debating like a lawyer like Bill Clinton did but I would like to note that regardless of how Bill defined sex we all knew what happened and much the same goes for Yoo.”
Very clever, TMSF. By putting Yoo's statements with Clinton, you have done a run around to call Yoo a liar.
Good point DDuck12 and it was not my intent but it was close. My intent was to call lawyers liars which I have found to be very often the case especially when you tie lawyer to a powerful position. To me word parsing is a socially acceptable way to lie that I do not think it is acceptable, moral or honorable but it is very legal.