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Torture is a Moral Issue

From A Recent Email Discussion: Torture is a Moral Issue: Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear. It degrades everyone involved -- policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation's most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable. Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now -- without exceptions. Endorse the statement today: http://www.nrcat.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=140 ( Ed Note: I suggest that you always should use a secondary spam-able email address (i.e.YahooMail or GMail) for all of your public petition signing online. This type of open public user list can often be abused by spammers) http://www.tortureisamoralissue.org People of faith from across the country are joining to declare: "Torture is a Moral Issue." I hope you will join me in this campaign to end U.S.-sponsored torture - without exception. My Reply: Aww, but it looks like so much fun on TV. Like when Jack Bauer had to save us all from the terrorists with the nuke, again and again and again. (Do you sense a recurring theme here?) Spoilsport! (Sorry 'bout that) Yes, glad to participate. Wrote my congresspeople about that one already last year. ...and will again to remind the new folks in office next year, how the last ones lost their re-election. ...and talk to the folks in my (once again) party (of the moment) at the Michigan state convention about how our de-facto endorsement of Mr. 100 years more war with his big smug smile, is going to help us lose big in November. The presumed right and ability to participate in state sponsored torture invariably leads to abuse. It is a spirit, that our nation has allowed itself to have been propagandized into endorsing, just like in 1930's and 40's Germany. Hitler with his recurring themes of how we must "defend" ourselves against the "Verdammt Juden" and state sponsored self-destruction of Kristallnacht, inciting his nation into wanton genocidal violence. We have to defend ourselves, WeAreSoVeryAfraid, etc. ad nauseum. Not only is it immoral, it is ineffective and worse than that, it leads to continuing and self perpetuating errors in judgment and action. References: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/rendition701/ Extraordinary Rendition - Watch Video Online http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/ The Torture Question - Watch Video Online http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/paper/ The Torture Question - Timeline http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101201885.html or http://tinyurl.com/2z4bbd "Does torture work? The Bush administration has argued that, at a minimum, tough interrogation tactics do. But in the e-mail discussion below, four U.S. military experts with very different life experiences explain why they concluded that torture doesn't work. The exchange is excerpted with their permission. First is Army Capt. Kyle Teamey, a current military intelligence officer: Subject: INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES When I was in the officer's basic course, one of the instructors, only half-jokingly, proclaimed, "Beatings and drugs are for fun, not for information." His point was you can get anyone to say anything you want through torture. Good information came from psychology, interpersonal skills, and long hours with your prisoner. The best interrogators I've worked with tended to be very good at reading people and very good at using their understanding of the person and their culture to get them to talk -- no waterboarding required. . . . We should be developing an ideological alternative (or alternatives) to jihad and are instead alienating our allies, enraging the populations from which the terrorists arise, and most importantly, alienating our COG [center of gravity] in the form of the U.S. electorate. A liberal democracy, such as the US, operating in an environment with pervasive media cannot afford to dally in tactics that may provide some short term gains at the expense of long term success. It is not just the US that has made this error in judgment. The Brits and French did the same in their COIN [counterinsurgency] campaigns in 20th century and suffered for it. We should learn from their mistakes -- and ours. " http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41314/ "Fyodor Dostoyevsky said that you can tell what a nation is like by the way it treats its prisoners, and by that measure the United States has not exactly been a beacon of light for the world. But what does the fact that we outsource these crimes to big, faceless transnational corporations say about us?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition Extraordinary Rendition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht http://www.google.com/search?&q=Kristallnacht Kristallnacht (spell Cristal Crystal Nacht Crystalnacht Cristalnacht ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment The Milgram Experiment http://www.stentorian.com/2ndamend/jafo.html http://www.stentorian.com/2ndamend/ US Constitutional 2nd Amendment Rights Grace! AND MERCY! Steve

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