lol (dark humor) - If I can't get agreement that water boarding is severe pain, can I at least get a "other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses"

I am pretty sure it would profoundly disrupt my senses.

take it however you like.
my opinion stands.

<Salil, seriously, how stupid are we? >

Oh its not a "we" thing, it most certainly just a you thing.

<Funny that you drop the term "zionist" and have settled on simply "international bankers". I think you should keep on saying "zionist" if only because it erases any credibility you might have with anyone else reading this. >

Funny that you can't read, and that anyone employing an elementary level of reading comprehension would clearly see that I have pointed out that your 'international banker' conspiracy is equivalent and in fact the same as the 'International Zionist banker' conspiracy.

Same thing.

The only people who drop the 'zionist' part are the ones trying to pass their anti-semitism under the radar.

<Yes, the treasury owns the *literal* printing press to make paper money>

yes they do, so why did you say otherwise? Why did you argue that the people who own the printing presses were making tons of $$, and then complain that the government wasnt making the money on the interest? It doesnt make any sense. If you actually knew who owned the presses, you wouldnt have made such an absurd statement.

<owned by the private entities that you will kill and torture Americans for, in order to serve and prove your loyalty. >

straw man would be a nice way to characterize this ongoing and flagrant invention on your part. This ENTIRE time I have been defending the use of coercive persuasion against FOREIGN ENEMIES, it is you who keeps bringing torture, and now lethality and US citizens into the issue. Total flagrant falsehood on your part.

<Everyone else does. >

if by everyone you mean you and your anarcho-commie friend Patrick but no one else, then yeah.

<You are a criminal, Salil. You sit here and do nothing but think of ways to normalize torture and make it legal>

Oh, no you have the legal wherewithal to dictate criminality? you certainly are full of yourself Sean. And guess what, THINKING is not a crime in America. its a shame that you advocate thought crimes and thought policing.

<You sit here and do nothing but think of reasons we should suspend the constitution>

more lies and sheer invention on your part. Simply because I am aware of the historical truths you want to ignore to perpetuate your mythical delusions does not mean I sit here and do nothing but blah blah blah.

Also, your own internal logic is totally corrupt. how can I sit here and do nothing but three different things?

1) "think of ways to normalize torture and make it legal"
2) "think of reasons we should suspend the constitution"
3) "declare our Founding Fathers are sick twisted torture fetishists"

Those are three things. If I am doing nothing but thinking of ways to suspend the Constitution, that doesnt leave much room for anything else, does it?

< You sit here, like the peice of filth that you are, and declare our Founding Fathers are sick twisted torture fetishists.>

I'm not declaring anything, I'm simply stating facts - the Founding Fathers suspended civil liberties and tortured people. If you want to sit in your imaginary world and pretend this didnt happen, then be my guest.

Even ignoring the atrocities the Framers dealt to their slaves, raping and abusing, and the policies of pure abuse towards the Amerindian, White Loyalists were TORTURED by the revolutionaries:

"The story of the United Empire Loyalists is an interesting one. During the American Revolution, American troops attempted to capture Canada, though they were not successful, they were able to break their ties to Britain. Despite this, about a third of the American colonists were still loyal to the British crown and were forced to take up arms for their cause. When the war was over, the Loyalists found that their property had been either confiscated or destroyed by the triumphant revolutionists and that many of them were banished under penalty of death. A great number of Loyalists were also tortured and publicly humiliated"

www.myhamilton.ca/myhamilto...Statue.htm

You're simply talking out of your ass.

<Look Salil, maybe you were a nice guy at some point that really did mean well. But you're tainted now. Your hands are stained with blood, and you're eventually going to have to face justice. The best you can do for yourself is to show some remorse and genuine repentance for your crimes and hope that a jury shows mercy on you. >

unfortunately there is no evidence that you were ever rational or educated.

And I'm not sure what crimes you're talking about. I've never interrogated anyone, I'm not an interrogator. I've told you that a slew of times, yet you keep accusing me of being a torturer. Your a liar, and you lie for some reason, what reason is it?

What purpose does your deception serve?

BTW, feel free to keep calling me Bob, but as Sean has stated, my name is Salil, and as some of you know, I'm a dark skinned swarthy guy with a funny name, who has spent a lot of time on planes and in sensitive government facilities and offices since 9/11. I've been accused and assaulted by dumb misled kids in uniform I've been forced to work with from time to time, for being some sort of 'raghead spy', Even my close colleagues jokingly call me "Sleeper Cell" - so trust me, more than any of you, I "get it". The problem is, many of you dont.

I gave up a lucrative career in the corporate world and a promising future in academia to serve my country. but you keep calling me a traitor, Sean. I'll still stay awake for 5 days straight when I need to in order to accomplish the mission and keep you safe and snuggly in your bed.

And I won't file a torture complaint either.

On that note, I'm going to be in Washington for the rest of the month in iso, so see you guys at the end of May.

BY CHARLES C. KRULAK and JOSEPH P. HOAR
(Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999.
Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.)
www.miamiherald.com/opinion/...7832.html

In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster.

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

We have seen how ill-conceived policies that ignored military law on the treatment of enemy prisoners hindered our ability to defeat al Qaeda. We have seen American troops die at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about tortured Muslim detainees at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. And yet Cheney and others who orchestrated America's disastrous trip to ``the dark side'' continue to assert -- against all evidence -- that torture ``worked'' and that our country is better off for having gone there.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Cheney applauded the ``enhanced interrogation techniques'' -- what we used to call ``war crimes'' because they violated the Geneva Conventions, which the United States instigated and has followed for 60 years. Cheney insisted the abusive techniques were ``absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States.'' He claimed they were ``directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States. It was good policy . . . It worked very, very well.''

Repeating these assertions doesn't make them true. We now see that the best intelligence, which led to the capture of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was produced by professional interrogations using noncoercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.

Torture is as likely to produce lies as the truth. And it did.

What leaders say matters. So when it comes to light, as it did recently, that U.S. interrogators staged mock executions and held a whirling electric drill close to the body of a naked, hooded detainee, and the former vice president winks and nods, it matters.

The Bush administration had already degraded the rules of war by authorizing techniques that violated the Geneva Conventions and shocked the conscience of the world. Now Cheney has publicly condoned the abuse that went beyond even those weakened standards, leading us down a slippery slope of lawlessness. Rules about the humane treatment of prisoners exist precisely to deter those in the field from taking matters into their own hands. They protect our nation's honor.

To argue that honorable conduct is only required against an honorable enemy degrades the Americans who must carry out the orders. As military professionals, we know that complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. Moral equivocation about abuse at the top of the chain of command travels through the ranks at warp speed.

On Aug. 24, the United States took an important step toward moral clarity and the rule of law when a special task force recommended that in the future, the Army interrogation manual should be the single standard for all agencies of the U.S. government.

The unanimous decision represents an unusual consensus among the defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security agencies. Members of the task force had access to every scrap of intelligence, yet they drew the opposite conclusion from Cheney's. They concluded that far from making us safer, cruelty betrays American values and harms U.S. national security.

On this solemn day we pause to remember those who lost their lives on 9/11. As our leaders work to prevent terrorists from again striking on our soil, they should remember the fundamental precept of counterinsurgency we've relearned in Afghanistan and Iraq: Undermine the enemy's legitimacy while building our own. These wars will not be won on the battlefield. They will be won in the hearts of young men who decide not to sign up to be fighters and young women who decline to be suicide bombers. If Americans torture and it comes to light -- as it inevitably will -- it embitters and alienates the very people we need most.

Our current commander-in-chief understands this. The task force recommendations take us a step closer to restoring the rule of law and the standards of human dignity that made us who we are as a nation. Repudiating torture and other cruelty helps keep us from being sent on fools' errands by bad intelligence. And in the end, that makes us all safer.

Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.