USA: Torture in Black and White
International law is clear. Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment can never be justified. They are never legal. Even in a state of emergency which threatens the life of the nation, there can be no exemption from this obligation.
International law is also clear about the state’s duties when this prohibition is violated. States must ensure that independent and impartial investigations are carried out into allegations of torture or other ill treatment and that anyone found responsible is brought to justice. Victims of violations must be provided with remedies that are not only available in law, but are accessible and effective in practice.
On 16 April 2009, the US Department of Justice released, largely un-redacted, four memorandums written in the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2002 and 2005. The documents, which the previous US administration had classified as Top Secret, give an insight into how that administration lost its legal and moral compass in turning to torture and other ill-treatment in the name of counter-terrorism.
The release of the memorandums by the new administration is welcome. Amnesty International has long called for all such documents to be published. However, accompanying statements issued by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, effectively conferring impunity for acts of torture, crimes under international law, are incompatible with the USA’s international legal obligation to bring perpetrators to justice.
All four OLC memorandums were directed to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and provided legal approval for various interrogation techniques that the CIA had used or wished to use in the USA’s secret detention program operated on foreign soil following the attacks of 11 September 2001.
The techniques variously approved by the OLC, for use singly or in combination, included:
- abdominal and facial slapping.
- confinement in small dark spaces, such as a box. If the space was large enough to stand in, confinement could last for up to 18 hours. For a space in which the detainee could not stand, confinement was restricted to two hours. This technique could be combined with exploitation of phobias, such as putting an insect in the box with a detainee who had a fear of insects.
- forced nudity. One of the 2005 memorandums notes that “this technique is used to cause psychological discomfort, particularly if a detainee, for cultural or other reasons, is especially modest… [I]nterrogators can exploit the detainee’s fear of being seen naked… For the purposes of our analysis, we will assume that detainees subjected to nudity as an interrogation technique are aware that they may be seen naked by a female”.
- stress positions such as forcing the detainee to kneel while leaning back at a 45 degree angle.
- sleep deprivation for up to 11 days. One of the 2005 memorandums notes that “the primary method of sleep deprivation involves the use of shackling to keep the detainee awake. In this method, the detainee is standing and is handcuffed, and the handcuffs are attached to a length of chain to the ceiling…. The detainee’s feet are shackled to a bolt in the floor…. Should the detainee begin to fall asleep, he will lose his balance and awaken, either because of the sensation of losing his balance or because of the restraining tension of the shackles”. Another method of sleep deprivation, the memorandum noted, is to shackle the detainee to a small stool: “The stool supports the detainee’s weight, but is too small to permit the subject to balance himself sufficiently to be able to go to sleep”.
- dietary manipulation’, or the denial of solid food and its substitution by liquid nutrients.
- dousing with cold water; one of the 2005 memorandums notes that “cold water is poured on the detainee either from a container or from a hose without a nozzle. This technique is intended to weaken the detainee’s resistance and persuade him to cooperate with interrogators”.
- water-boarding’, commonly known as simulated drowning.The 2002 memorandum found that the technique “constitutes a threat of imminent death”, but approved it on the grounds that it would not cause “prolonged mental harm” and therefore did not amount to torture under US law.
The cold detail of these memorandums written by Justice Department lawyers to provide “legal cover” for CIA operatives interrogating detainees held in secret detention should be read alongside the allegations of how these techniques were put into practice, as reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC’s confidential February 2007 report to the US government based on the organization’s interviews in Guantánamo in late 2006 with 14 detainees who had been held for up to four and a half years incommunicado in solitary confinement in the secret program before being transferred to the US? Naval Base in Cuba has recently been leaked into the public domain.The ICRC concluded that:
“The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
The ICRC also concluded that the 14 detainees had been subjected by the USA to enforced disappearance, like torture a crime under international law.
However, both President Obama and Attorney General Holder said that anyone who had relied “in good faith” upon the legal advice in the OLC opinions would not be prosecuted. The Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, said that he would “strongly oppose any effort to investigate or punish those who followed the guidance of the Department of Justice”. The Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, said that “it is important to remember the context of these past events…The CIA was struggling to obtain critical information”. The interrogation methods, he said, “read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing… We will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos and those guidelines”. Again, under international law there can be no justification for torture and other ill treatment.
In a letter to CIA officers, President Obama said: “In releasing these memos, the men and women of the CIA have assurances from both myself, and from Attorney General Holder, that we will protect all who acted reasonably and relied upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that their actions were lawful. The Attorney General has assured me that these individuals will not be prosecuted and that the Government will stand by them”. But there is no such thing as torture perpetrated in “good faith” or “reasonable” circumstances.
President Obama’s letter to the CIA continued: “This is a time for reflection, not retribution.... Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past”. There is justice and respect for human rights to be gained, however, and this is what drives demands for an end to impunity. Impunity breeds abuse. It is time for truth and accountability. It is time for the USA to meet its international obligations. This should include establishing an independent commission of inquiry into all aspects of US detention and interrogation practices since 11 September 2001.
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The result of which, is that who and what witches are and do is listed and anecdoted in great detail
But,ask somebody if they kissed a goat, then break their leg if they say no. Hold a hammer over the other leg and ask again--you get a lot of yes's. Therefore it's common knowledge that part of the intitiation into old Wicca involves kissing a goat.
All torture does is enforce a mythology, a theory, and political platform. It rarely if ever finds new evidence.
"okay I'm a terrorist, please stop hitting me" is pretty useless as a confession.
For heavens sakes. Here is the answer, undeniable and simple--Simply put,the current scientific theorem is that we all evolved over billions of years from simple amino acids which over millenia branched out into myriad life forms we know today.
Religious people believe God created the universe.
Given new information, Evolutionsists change their theories, and have done several times over the last hundred years or so.
Christianity is based on FAITH. and despite any evidence presented, they will not yield to the possibility that Adam and Eve did not exist. Evidence is seen simply as a test to their faith, and digs them in all the harder.
Define Torture is always the first place pro Bush, pro torture wags run to. Legal wrangling and definitions have allowed America to become everything Bush stood for--redefining torture, so it can torture. Redefining POW, so it can ignore the geneva convention. Use Gitmo as a detainee site, so constitutional, legal and human rights laws do not apply. Redefine power, so it was unaccountable to any but itself.
Now we stand discussing "did America torture in Gitmo". Perhaps next we can argue "Does America start with the letter A". If Bush and his ilk say no, expect a flood of argument from the peanut gallery
I don't care if the U.S. did practice torture in Gitmo. Those people in Gitmo were terrorists out to destroy everybody against their cause, which meant taking innocent lives. Inexcusable! No such person deserves what terrorists do to "heretics of their cause". For example, today in Baghdad, a bombing claimed 155 lives. Why? What was the bombing's purpose? Why should thousands of innocents suffer for your cause and pay with their lives?! The terrorists deserved to be tortured. Look what they did on 9/11. Now tell me they don't deserve a cruel and unusual punishment. What they did was horrible, scaring families and killing all those poor, innocent people because they hate democracy . Well, protest, don't kill! What they have done and will always do is wrong enough to enforce cruel and unusual punishment upon them.
Isn't this rather presuming that all detainees are in fact guilty terrorists? If this is the case then why have there been so few trials after so many years?
Perhaps some of them are not terrorists at all. More than 550 detainees have so far been released from Guantanamo without charge. So we must ask the question: has your country been practising torture on innocent civilians? It seems so. And you 'don't care'? With the greatest of respect, that's not the America I know and love...
totally agree and proud to see someone have the courage to say it..
Sometimes it is necessary and I do not have a problem with it. There is a very fine line here. But when a single individual holds important information that could affect thousands of lives, then so be it, do what needs to be done. In some cases sacrificing one for the good of many is essential. Until this world is living a utopian life then we must learn to accept the good and the bad. We would be crazy to expect every single person on this planet is good natured.
For the life of me I don't understand why anyone takes the side of someone whose goal in life is to kill or maim as many Americans as possible. It's interesting that those who are opposed to "excessive or extreme" interrogation seem to be pacifists, typically have refused to served in the armed forces, never been physically assaulted and hide behind the Constitution loudly proclaiming their "rights" are being abused. Get a life and if you don't like this country...leave.
You say that you 'don't understand why anyone takes the side of someone whose goal in life is to kill or maim as many Americans as possible', but how about if you were an Iraqi whose family had been murdered by US forces?
Why is maiming and killing only wrong if it's against Americans? What about the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed in the war ? What about the estimated 5m Iraqis orphaned during the war? Some Americans would do well to note that the price of this war is not just borne by Americans.
And where in the constitution is pacifism banned? Why should pacifists be forced to fight in a war they disagree with? Why would being physically assualted make anyone a better American? What's wrong with an individual asserting the rights granted him or her in the constitution?
I find it sad that the American right wing has been able to conflate patriotism with war.
Yes we did but hell it worked and in times it's necessary.
If by "it worked" you mean it coerced false confessions to give Bush his phony rationale for war, yeah, I guess you could say that.
But torture got at least one American killed. The Daniel Perl decapitation was done in revenge for U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib, according to the killers.
Bush forced soldiers in Iraq to coerce false confessions to start a war that had already been started? Hmmm. I guess this makes sense to a dogmatic leftie.
Where do you see that what was done at GITMO gave use false confessions? Also the enemy won't give a second thought to torturing us so why should we?
Bush and Cheney needed to connect Iraq to 9/11. But they had a problem. No credible evidence, and the fact that the Sunnis (Saddam) and Shia (al Qaeda) hated each other's guts. So they had their lawyers justify torture after the CIA had already used it, to give themselves legal cover.
They reverse-engineered the program from SERE training, designed to help troops resist coerced confessions. False confessions are very useful to totalitarians who need them to demonize their enemies. Waterboarding was invented by the Spanish Inquisition to elicit false confessions, so they could convert or burn Jews alive and take their property. The Nazis, Imperial Japanese and North Koreans also found torture useful for propaganda purposes. Or do you think John McCain's videotaped confession to war crimes was a true confession?
At Bagram, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and numerous "Black Sites," the CIA waterboarded, beat, hung by the hands, sleep-deprived and terrorized their suspects for thousands of hours until they got the bogus confessions and connections to Iraq Bush wanted. They videotaped the torture sessions which showed CIA thugs beating and drowning the detainees to implicate Iraq in 9/11. These were war crimes.
Then the CIA destroyed the 98 torture videotapes, to prevent the public from seeing them, and the real purpose of the torture program and to protect Bush and Cheney. This was destruction of evidence, a federal crime .
The Inspector General's "Holy Grail", or "Big Kahuna" 2004 torture report is supposed to be released soon. The report shows suspects were subjected to rape, dog bites, suffocation, mock executions, menaced with power drills, guns , electrodes and forced to drink urine, along with the beatings, and several deaths due to this treatment. These are also war crimes.
Some would have us become like our enemy in order to win. If we do that, then they have won.
Sinking to our enemy's level should not be the first response, or the last. It should not be in the realm of acceptable behavior. The Founding Fathers would have never approved of this program, and said so right in the U.S.Constitution, "no cruel or unusual punishments."
Or did you think government employees swear an oath to only uphold the parts of the constitution that you like?
Maybe you're OK with getting down in al Qaeda's moral cesspool, with their companions in morality, the Nazis, North Koreans and Imperial Japan. And now, the Bush Administration.
Me, I'm aiming for something a little bit higher than the Spanish Inquisition.
Where the hell is your evidence for this: "
At Bagram, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and numerous "Black Sites," the CIA waterboarded, beat, hung by the hands, sleep-deprived and terrorized their suspects for thousands of hours until they got the bogus confessions and connections to Iraq Bush wanted. They videotaped the torture sessions which showed CIA thugs beating and drowning the detainees to implicate Iraq in 9/11. These were war crimes.
Then the CIA destroyed the 98 torture videotapes, to prevent the public from seeing them, and the real purpose of the torture program and to protect Bush and Cheney. This was destruction of evidence, a federal crime ."
and this : "The Inspector General's "Holy Grail", or "Big Kahuna" 2004 torture report is supposed to be released soon. The report shows suspects were subjected to rape, dog bites, suffocation, mock executions, menaced with power drills, guns , electrodes and forced to drink urine, along with the beatings, and several deaths due to this treatment. These are also war crimes. "
IF you have actual concrete evidence then good, but I don't buy those conspiracy bullshit site's.
Also I wanna know who you think was responsible for 9/11?
Actual concrete evidence? What like, the videotapes the CIA DESTROYED? Here's some links to electronic evidence. The concrete stuff is in Cuba, Afghanistan, Iraq, Virginia and D.C.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/tortured-to-justify-a-war.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?ex=1274241600&en=4579c146cb14cfd6&ei=5088
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/politics/24abuse.html?_r=1&fta=y
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11/ig-report-waterboarding-w_n_201733.html
http://washingtonindependent.com/48886/breaking-the-2004-cia-inspector-general-torture-reports-release-is-delayed-again
http://crooksandliars.com/2008/05/20/doj-inspector-general-report-fbi-concerns-about-torture-ignored
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6807100.ece
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/politics/23cia.html?hp
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOTk5mUIVTPTRGU5hoR5JJrr38BAD9A87LBO0
http://pubrecord.org/commentary/3878/cias-chief-apologist-apologize /
http://www.alternet.org/story/141722/sodomized_to_protect_our_freedoms/?page=entire
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/8289
http://www.linktv.org/video/2346
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/21/AR2009022101234.html
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1654240271.html?dids=1654240271 :1654240271&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Mar+3%2C+2009&author=Carrie+Johnson%3BJoby+Warrick+-+Washington+Post+Staff+Writers&pub=The+Washington+Post&edition=&startpage=A.1&desc=CIA+Destroyed+92+Interrogation++Tapes%2C+Probe+Says
Who was responsible for 9/11? Lotsa people.
Ronald Reagan and GHW Bush armed bin Laden against the Russians and then abandoned him, pissing him off to no end. GW Bush ignored intelligence briefings titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." and reports of their pilot training, then dropped his guard for long enough to let the hijackers board planes. Our military had time to shoot them down but didn't...
...but ultimately, the ones most responsible were the 17 miserable Saudis who flew the jets into the buildings.
But I'm not really interested in who you think caused 9/11, because you seem believe whatever you get from Faux News, Limbaugh and the Republican Party talking points memos.
Did you know we had a chance to kill Bin Laden. Was right in our target range *missiles* BUT he was in a Prince's house so we didn't kill Bin Laden because we didn't want to make relation's with the Prince's country hostile. Also their were only two fighter jet's in the area at the time of the 9/11 attack's and they had no idea what to do. That's why they weren't shot down. It's all nice and good but I wanna see tapes or at the very least pictures. Even then I don't think we should convict them.
I am shocked this is even a question - that a small US 20% minority of fascist enablers and collaborators can diffuse an issue such as this. I guess it pays these days to deny anything - global warming , peak oil , torture , cigarettes cause cancer , evolution , science , the earth is round.
Good thing we still have a great way to settle uncertainties - the courts. And that is where some of these irredeemable subhumans may soon find themselves facing questions, under oath.
WaterBoarding is not torture , it leaves no damage to the person experiencing it, but you will sure that you are going to die, it is uncomfortable, it is designed to be uncomfortable.
Any U.S. Service men or women who have every gone to SERE School has likely gone through being waterboarded, I know it was part of my experience and training, yes... it is uncomfortable and you think you are going to die, but you don't. It is designed to get information from enemy combatants that would as well like to torture and/or cut our heads off, I think a little WaterBoarding is fine, 168 time is OK. If giving these Islamic combatants would give up information during a professional massage, I would go with that, but that is designed to feel good. The funny part is the lying, liberal bastards would still call the massage sessions torture, because it fits their Marxist-Socialist agenda and they could care less about facts, or American lives.
According to the theory of Evolution, the highest form of life on earth, that being the the Homo Sapien, the the Human being as we know, evolved from inanimate matter, to form a single cell, which survived on its own, to then form some kind of animal and or tree, to then morph into several other types of animal or tree. Note i must include trees because they are living and the evolutionist have not addresed plant life. Now the cell at some point started a reproductive cycle instead splitting off as we know it. So from non life without any intelligence comes life with intelligence and with no external superlife form to bring about that change. For a theory to become a scientific fact, it must be falsifiable. Meaning you can put it to the test and prove it true or false. I have not seen any experiments where any scientist was able to prodcue a single living cell from ALL its components that we know of today. I would be happy to see that experiment. And even if you did find one, what would that prove? That it required some intelligent form to create such a cell. And then what? Show that it could sustain itself in any condition other a scientific lab (like the womb).
...go and get yourself an education with respect to the ToE. I suggest reading Richard Dawkins' recent effort The Greatest Show on Earth.
In all honesty, your lack of understanding of the subject you are trying to debate is not helpful to your cause.
The idea that evolution produces a hierarchy is high on the list of indications that one does not know what one is talking about. Also high on that list is using the word "evolutionist".
It's not on topic, anyway.
Whatever you think of climate concerns or evolution or totrture, I know you are able to see and appreciate many times in history where action, or lack of action, resulting in a sequence of outcomes that heavily depended on rational actions.
Watch any war , any major political upheaval - watchs the days and weeks before. Take WW2 for instance. There were many moments before WW2 where certain actions could have averted the war itself - You should be able to condense out many situations where the deliberate meaning of actions would have had the most impact for years to come. Imagine the emergence of the internet itself - can you imagine a future where people made 'all the wrong choices" and we would have been left with a significantly inferior world wide web? Or none at all !!
The problem here is not whether man-made climate change is valid or torture is real, or evolution is a liberal lie, or not valid. What is clearly so distressing is that the debate is persecuted as either pro or against as dictated by an almost ritualistic dance of political convictions. Right now it seems pre-ordained that if you are of one political lineage, you are pre-destined against the idea, and if you belong with the other faction, you are in favor. I see so few exceptions I get the feeling we are
in some kind of mass hysteria on both sides of the issue here.
I am worried by this factionalism itself, because it may be that we are set to make a number
of cataclysmic policy stupidities because of the false dichotomy.
For example
Neither side A nor side B is well equipped to accept the idea of 'geo-engineering'. Side A would
label geo-engineering, 'hysterical', a 'waste of tax payer money ', 'hubris', 'probably an excuse
to institute a one world government .
At the samer time side B would claim geo-engineering to be 'cold corporate technocrtic' or
'will benefit only the rich nations and leverage off hidden costs to the poor. It would be 'fascist'
and would probably be met with the same anti-rationalist suspicion as 'fear of GMO's''.
Another example
What if a scientist enters arguments in the climate debate that largescale climate change is
unavoidable, and the best route should be 'damage control'. He comes on TV with a high budget
TV presentation with gorean graphics and arguments making the case 'billions will die. We
can't avoid it. It is caused by both the sun warming up at the worst possible time, confounded
with man made emissions. We must take action and expend tax money to create underground
bunkers where people can survive the collapse and die-off.'
Such an argument with be completely unacceptable to either side of the debate, even if the
scientist were to come with solid evidence. All people locked in the current dualist debate would
enter denial mode, based on dogma as opposed to the arguments involved. The evidence
would be ignored with rationalizations based on hostility, prejuduce, wishful thinking or
factional based peer authority.
I present the case wer as a species are effectively paralyzed from making a good decission,
IRREGARDLESS OF WHAT IS TRUE largely because of this slapstick tribal division running
through international politics . I'd call this a worst case scenario and if this won't get us in serious
problems in this whole climate debate, it will return in the next decads, and probably on more
serious matters.
Imagine if we are to come to solutions when nanotech and robotics cancel out 95% of all
existing jobs , and the brainlocked political ideologies dictate the debate? People are
already obstinate and spiteful enough to prefer extinction over 'agreeing with the other side'.
If you think that's not true, listen to Alex Jones. We aren't being duped by false arguments or
flawed science or corporate lobbyist or the New World Order here.
We are may be under the spell of some kind of severe collective cognitive disorder in the human
genome here. The irrational character of climate debate may in fact be a Y2K bug in the
human brain itself.
How do we normally resolve debates? we go to some guy who is an expert. We can't do that
right now - all people we respect have been dragged in either trench and everyone caught in
the middle runs for cover in the trenches as well. It's a deadlock.
There is another way to look at this, and it takes you take your own conceptions with a grain of salt, specifically the reflex that regards something -anything- and concludes "instinctively" it is either "common sense" or "preposterous". A good look at history would make you conclude many times people had set preconceptions, based on their paradigm of the world, which were *wrong*.
For instance, if someone shows me the mechanical complexity of existence, and I were to ponder this, my paradigm of instinctive understanding would be to conclude almost immediately no creative entity would or can have been involved, and if any was, that creative entity would be of exceptional ruthlessness and sadism - and I don't like a reality 'governed' by such an eminent diabolical sadism,
...so I prefer the universe where nothing or no one can be blamed for such ghastly an atrocity. In other words, this universe (and evolved life) is so viciously mean, the idea someone intentionally designed it, would be unacceptable and horrendous.
But that is just me and my perceptions, and should only be anecdotal to you.
Let's give you a totally different example. What if I were to point you to the writings of H.P.Lovecraft, and I were to assert the following:
(1) Lovecraft was a visionary with access to sources of knowledge beyond his five senses.
(2) Azathoth, one of Lovecraft's ideas, is in fact synonymous with Sagittarius A*
Both statements would entail a corpus of understandings, namely that A > B, the certain qualities of Azathoth and Sagittarius A*, that both overlap, but most importantly, that Azathoth has a will, determination, may have some kind of intent and purpose. Azathoth is not dumb as a rock - Azathoth has plans for you and me, and most likely - very unpleasant plans. If true, this should be a grave concern.
You might say - what do I give a damn about that vague, distant Sagittarius A* or that fictional Azathoth? I would no doubt say the same about that outdated, parochial, somewhat silly idea of your allusions to an antromorphic creative deity that listens to prayers of humans. But that poses no sensible argument to you, no doubt.
My statement is however a bit less common. Azathoth and Sagittarius A* are both rather out-of-the-mainstream conceptions... my statement is outrageous and bizarre.
Other than discounting it out of prejudice, it may be important to at least understand it, and estimate its relevance. I would then say - read the articles about both, starting with wikipedia, and come to your own conclusion - I assert that Sagittarius A* does in fact exist (it does!) and that Azathoth as remarkably congruent with Sagittarius A* - hence, Azathoth exists, is situated at the center of the galaxy, 40.000 lightyears away from us.
If you objected to having to accept this truth, you could do so for several reasons (a) it is outrageous and horrendous (just as your horrid claim of some kind of creative entity intentionally begetting brain parasites and killer wasps) or (b) there is insufficient evidence for it.
The point is, you *cannot* fairly make bold claims, and by far the claim that life evolved is a less bold claim than the claim life was created with purpose. Google Occams Razor if you are not certain if this is a sensible statement.
I can neither prove or disprove the statement that Sagittarius A* is in fact Azathoth. I can more or less prove that Sagittarius A* exists. I can prove that H.P. Lovecraft has in fact existed and his writings exist, and you can attest this from your own analysis. But the step that Sagittarius A* is in fact congruent with the idea Azathoth *demands* evidence, and if I do not provide evidence, I am either a zaelot, a liar, a fantast or suffering from delusions.
Fortunately, we are in a far easier situation with (the theory of) evolution . It is a theoretical construct, and you'd have to understand the basics of knowledge theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Knowledge_ (IB_course) and look at the requirements of logic, sensory perception, revelation, faith, memory, consensus, authority, intuition, and self-awareness. (and also coherence, correspondence, pragmatism, and consensus.)
Evolution scores *very* high on those tests on knowability and it outclasses faith-based arguments.
With such a bold statement, how can you try and back up your argument with evolution . Evolution is a theory! Why in the hell would you say evolution?
In regards to torture , we must define torture. Torture is the act of inflicting pain or anguish on an individual. So i believe this was a case of torture, but morally justifiable torture that led to information vital to the safety of Americans.
...would you feel that al-Qaeda were morally justified if they tortured captured Americans that led to information vital to the safety of al-Qaeda operatives?
... instance where torture saved American lives. It cost Daniel Perl his.
( ONE - quote)
No. The theory of evolution is much more than "just a theory" in the common use of the term.
The word "theory" in normal usage means a guess or a hunch. But in science , a "theory" is a belief that has been generally accepted by scientists as a result of actual experimentation and/or observation.
Most biologists believe that evolution is more than a theory; it is an established fact. The earth's life forms have evolved over billions of years. Species of animals have been recently observed as continuing to evolve, both in the lab and field.
There remains debate about some details of past evolution. For example, there is a consensus that dinosaurs evolved and that birds evolved; there is some debate as to whether dinosaurs were the distant ancestors of birds.
Read more here: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_stat.htm
***
my conclusion is that the very peculiar evolution is not just a local cultural debate on validity of conservatism versus (the quaint concept) liberalism. This debate is regarded with apprehension outside the US, in civilized countries and has made a laughing stock of of the country. At the same time as the idea of evolution denial remains a symbolic flag to wave, the catholic pope *also* regards evolution is effectively a proven reality and calls creationists to come to their senses. The debate isn't as much on validity or what is true - it is a debate of right versus wrong. It is a tribal battle over societal values. It is purely a historic artifact that conservative elements have taken up rejecting evolution, as symbolic and totemic a choice as a soccer team insisting that their team colors are right and other colors categorically wrong.
I don't care much about the debate other than to associate the element ding the denying with a lower cognitive ability. The people in favor of creationism are in me regard a demographic of people 'who aren't as smart' - and I say that in the most contemptuous tone. This is the rebellion of dumb people, who have had it with those "high and mighty uppity city folk" and will "teach them a lesson", That side can only lose and one hopes they won't drag down the country in the proces.
And here is where you start angrily saying you are not dump and in fact *I* am dump.
(TWO)
A critical example highlighting the problem with torture . First two questions; when is a type of abuse a form of torture? Well, according to several people who used to think it wasn't waterboarding is not merely a form of torture, but also one that can easily cause permanent trauma.
* http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/right-wing-talker-mancow-gets-waterboar
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58
But what is more relevant is the insidious assumption that your side in a conflict is prone to tolerance "when saving lives" and the other side "is barbaric by virtue of its actions". If for example an middle east soldier captures a US citizen who may or may not know when the US army will bomb a place somewhere in the middle east - not just for some military gain - but he suspects that in the attack an orphanage may be struck.
What if the soldier, facing the moral dilemma, records himself on Youtube, waterboarding the US national, explaining his dilemma in unbroken english, and depicts the retrieval of information leading to anticipating the attack (and incidentally, the middle eastern nation locates so many anti-aircraft weapons that more than ten attacking airplanes are destroyed), saving 100 orphans from certain death --- is that soldier a valiant soldier, protector of orphans, deserving of a medal for making tough decisions in a war? Or is he someone the US department of justice will go after, for the rest of his life, to bring him to "justice"?
The fact that many americans will say 'NO - WE'LL GET HIM - DEATH SENTENCE!' is what is commonly called "cognitive dissonance" - the other side is suspect and morally dubious. The friendly side is above suspicion and assumed to act in best interests.
It is very hard to convey to a side in a state of cognitive dissonance what precisely they do wrong. It took the german people an obliterating defeat at the end of WW2. Even then quite a few didn't get it. But what matters is that the Nuremberg defense "I was acting under orders!" never saved any of them from the gallows.
I will see US soldiers sentenced in my lifetime, inside and outside the US. Then you will know what happened here and the shame will haunt you the rest of your life.