(And would Andy approve of using that sexual hot-button word [faggot] against a terrorist? I bet he wouldn't, even if it actually were useful.)

And I bet he and his friends call each other faggot and fag at least ten times a day.

So Excitable Andy, answer my question. If you had been told that Dick Durbin's quote had come from someone who wants us to lose the war, would you have believed it? Of course, you would.

We could always let the detainees get married.

At, its bitches, whores, and queers.

And while we're asking questions of the excitable one, why hasn't he gotten "married" yet?

Ace, as an aspiring p0ker player and a lover of movies you should remember the classic "Cool Hand Luke" line. "Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand. ". Good p0ker players, especially in Hold'em, can often beat something with nothing by reading the other players. "Mike Caro's Book of Tells" is a good place to learn. It doesn't work as well playing online, of course.

Andypoo would be critical of Jesus for asswhiping the moneychangers out of the temple if Bush supported it.

Ilbis, the obvious answer is that he doesn't get married because it's not about him wanting to get married. It's about him wanting to tell you what your opinion of gay marriage is allowed to be. Simple cultural imperialism from a social liberal or hedonist who confuses petulance and contrived outrage with moral authority.

What a sad waste of a sometimes-fine mind The Excitable One has turned out to be.

The most despicable argument against "torture", though, is the ol' "we don't want to become like them, do weeeeeee?!?!" canard. These post-modern narcissistic Leftists have no higher principle than themselves; why should anyone else be different? How is it possible that these right-wing fundamentalist Christian red staters can retain their moral center as they make the hard choices necessary to fight this war? Won't they succumb to their basest impulses if given a chance? Isn't giving in to evil impulses the natural tendency among men, and indeed to be desired just as long as "no one gets hurt"? What hubris to think that one can maintain a moral center amids all this terrorist chaos, muses the typical Leftist, as the sword of the Islamofascist flashes towards his neck.

Ace, you bring up an excellent point with the whole "war changes the rules" thrust.

In peacetime, I don't get to firebomb cities. In wartime, I probably shouldn't-- sensitivities being what they are these days-- but I certainly can consider it.

Oh, and I can kill enemy soldiers by the bushel, and sleep soundly the next day. Yet, the moment they are prisoners, the rules of war kick in.

Well, if Al-Qaeda wants to play war without rules, then why shouldn't we have that same luxury? Whatever rules we choose to implement are purely for utilitarian reasons-- to feel better about ourselves, or because we think that following those rules has some other, secondary benefit (i.e. makes us more popular with people on the fence in the war).

But here's the deal: since Al Qaeda never made any rules with us, there is no utilitarian virtue in American following rules that Al Qaeda did not agree to. When Al Qaeda cuts off the heads of their victims, we have no utilitarian reason to avoid doing the same to their detainees.

Sure, there's a *moral* reason. . . but like you said, conventional morality goes by the wayside in war, to be replaced with purely utilitarian considerations.

That's why I never understood moral opposition to nuclear weapons, or napalm. As if flattening a city with high explosives, or peppering a man with shrapnel is so much more desirable for the victims of this violence than getting nuked or burned extra-crispy. Either way, *they* are dead-- we're only negotiated what we ourselves are willing to live with doing.

So, you're right to ask Andy et al.-- if we've already established that these people are terrorists who follow no rules, like the old joke goes, we're now negotiating only price.

And, as far as I am concerned, moral concerns of squeamishness have little place in this discussion, just as no one questions the morality of shooting, bombing, drowning or incinerating an enemy combatant. The only question is whether it makes utilitarian sense to rough up these prisoners at Gitmo (i.e., does torture work any better than trying to be their buddies? Does torture, or allegations of torture made possible by our secrecy *really* help recruit more terrorists, or does it scare them off?).

Bottom line: Andy knows warfare like I know sweet, sweet man-love. He should stick to what he knows.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

P.S. Ace, one other point to make is an obvious one: there are really two arguments at work here, and only one is about the treatment of prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere.

I think most of the lefty critics of Gitmo would begin before the issue of torture, and extend to whether or not they can be secretly held in the first place.

After all, if a critic doesn't believe that a member of Al Qaeda can be secretly held without a fair public trial executed by the standards of domestic American jurisprudence, they are certainly unlikely to believe that these terrorists can be roughed up, let alone tortured. If a critic believes that a foreign terrorist has the same rights as a domestic American prisoner, obviously, he must be protected like a domestic American prisoner.

Thus, you won't make any headway on torture with these critics, because regardless of their opinion on the propriety of torture, they wouldn't believe the terrorists should be in a Gitmo to begin with.

Of course, then the question is, what rights would they afford terrorists, where would they put them, how would they deal with operational security, how would they task soldiers to collect evidence, what standards would they judge that evidence against, etc.

Four years into this war, and these critics still can't answer *these* questions, let alone complain coherently about torture, either real or imagined.

Are there any coercive tactics he approves of?

Not if they occurred in this administration but I'd bet a whole lot of money that if the old master of horse poop, the First Felon himself, were to make a case for the exact same treatment as Andy is so excited about, such as loud music, cold AC, lack of AC, etc. it he'd find some way to accept it. What low down scumbags Liberals really are!

wow, Tongueboy, that was great. Really hit the nail on the head about Leftist narcissism. It's always all about them. Just like when the Lefties ask "why do they hate us?"--the answer is always what we did, never what the Islamists believe based on the Koran. We are always protrayed as the active, our enemies as the passive, with no free will to choose between right and wrong, always just reacting to our actions like animals. Typical Leftist condescention and bigotry. At least take them seriously, like Chris Hitchens does. The Islamists told us why they hate us. Why won't the left believe it?.

In his response to the E-mail you mention, Sullivan mentions as two examples of the horrors of American prison camps, one after another without distinction between them, 'being smeared with fake menstrual blood' and 'having one's legs beaten to a bloody pulp while screaming for mercy'.

Children, shall we play 'One of these things is not like the other'?

The first is an example of what Lileks calls 'the judicious application of cultural insensitivity'. If repeatedly saying 'Nee' to a person of a particular culture will get him to divulge important information without being physically harmed--go for it! The only good argument against this behavior, as far as I can see, is that if such tactics become public knowledge, they may hurt the image of the U.S. in the Muslim world. But interrogations necessarily are meant to be in some way or other, more unpleasant to the man being interrogated than the thought of betraying the organisation and ideals for which he may have been prepared to die. Unless Sullivan believes that these men simply should not BE interrogated at all, what more 'sensitive' but still sufficiently uncomfortable methods can he possibly suggest?

The second example he gives, of course, is something which anyone would agree falls under the (though ever more blurred and obscured by people like Sullivan) rubric of 'torture'--and is certainly something for which any prison officials involved should be punished. But this second example, unfortunately, is not unique to any particular prison in any particular country--prisoner abuse is an unfortunate side effect of the existence of prisons. And unless one is bound and determined to lay every misdeed of every person involved in Coalition forces at the feet of the higher-ups in the Bush administration, occasions like this one must be considered crimes like any others, plain and simple--committed by a few perverse individuals in positions of power.

Even Sullivan clearly realizes how silly it sounds to compare threatening a man with marker pen ink to the killing fields of Cambodia: he had to throw up a significantly worse if obviously not officially sanctioned crime committed by prison guards in Afghanistan alongside the trivialities at Gitmo, or be laughed immediately out of the room.

The man seems to think he deserves to be applauded as a considered, independent, maverick moderate for his ability to regularly turn on a dime and become just as blinkered, closed minded, and unquestioning of his current viewpoint as he was just weeks or days earlier of its exact opposite. Sullivan's every inch a blind partisan, albeit a bipolar partisan with severe selective amnesia.

Sorry to go off on a tangent in that last post. What I really wanted to do was dissect Durbin's implied question. Suppose one said "If I read a report to you about Jews being attacked in the street merely for being Jewish, and Jewish cemeteries being vandalized, and did not tell you that this was happening in present-day France, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis." The statement is accurate, just like Durbin's original remark, but not entirely fair, and certainly implies a similarity between present-day France and Nazi Germany. Does anyone think Durbin did not carefully choose those words to make the comparison he wanted to, while maintaining some plausible deniability?

Hey, maybe we should go easy on Excitable. I mean, it's not like he's defending the Downing Street Memos or anything.

Oh, wait...

THE DSM, AGAIN: The real news in the Downing Street memos is not, I think, some non-existent plot to lie to America about the war. The administration genuinely believed Saddam had WMDs, planned to remove him very shortly after 9/11, and made the broader case for democratization long before the war broke out. I agreed with them on all of it, and still do, apart from the obvious fact that we were wrong about the WMDs. But none of this is what is really scandalous about the memos. What's scandalous is that they reveal that the administration had no real plans for running Iraq after victory. Kevin Drum lays out the evidence here and calls it "criminal neglect." He's right. I assumed that this vital war would have enough troops to succeed and that there was a detailed and smart plan for the post-war. I was wrong. In retrospect, I should have been far more aggressive in asking questions about this before the war; and I apologize for negligence in that department. But I trusted in the competence of the Bush administration. When critics say I've changed my tune, they're wrong about my position on the war on terror in principle. I still support it, believe we are still at enormous risk of catastrophe, desperately want to win in Iraq and see the terror-masters in Tehran and Damascus go down. I have simply lost confidence in this administration's capacity to wage it effectively, honestly and morally. In the second term, I've seen nothing that would allow me to feel cheerier. They're all we've got and we have to support them when they do the right thing and hope that they succeed. But hope is not the same thing as confidence. I'm clinging to one even as I've lost all grip on the other.

The Downing Street Memos, for heaven's sake! Cripes.

Maybe he and Kevin Drum have a thang goin on

I wonder what Andy would do if Mohammed's terrorist cell had all of Andy's family, freinds, and lovers and were threatening to behead all of them? Would it be ok to use torture then?

Will Andy admit that there is a difference between doing what Dick Durbin quoted to viscious killers and doing it to innocent people? If you call prisoners or detainees what they are, genocidal madmen bent on the destruction of democracy and intent on ruling the world through any means necessary, I would not believe that they were found in that condition in one of Saddam or Stalins jails. They would be one of the guards.

Come on Andy, do we really have to fight a war with some of the worst scum the world has ever known with one arm tied behind our backs to appease your very gentle sensibilities?

And isn't all this really just revenge against Bush and the Republicans for advocating the gay marraige amendment?

I'm not trying to be sarcastic or rhetorical here, I'm seriously perplexed:

Why should I give two shits regarding Sullivan's opinion about anything?

zetetic: Good question. Sometimes people sound like Sully's jilted lovers. He wasn't God before he flipped and he's not quite the devil now. An annoying pain in the ass, but definitely not Saten.

I heart Andy!

Satan, not saten. Damn me to hell!

this news leaves me torn between Oy vey and Faaaabulous!!!.

Anybody see the documentary about gay Hasidics?

I have long since given up on having a reasonable debate with Bush haters, self-haters and America-haters and have gladly defaulted to the insult and ridicule. You spend so much time trying to correct the errors of their statements that you end up only correcting half of them in order to proceed to presenting your own position. With these hopeless people I say go straight to the ad hominen attack. I do admit though I still enjoy reading others who have more patience and continue to fight through debate as you can always learn something.

Your wasting your breath wondering what coercive techniques Andy or any one else on the other side would use.

Their whole argument is predicated on the assumption that we're not different "enough" from Nazis. This broad brush approach allows them to say that when we drop a Koran, we're no better than the Nazis. Turn up the AC, Pol Pot couldn't do worse.

It's not the techniques they're critiquing. It's our morality. This is a contest we'll lose every time with these sanctimonious lickspittles.

I choose not to play any more.

Excitable Andy approves of no coercive tactics against terrorists whatsoever during interrogations, apart from raised voices and lots of cursing.

Seems to me that banning loud rap music would implicitly ban raised voices and lots of cursing...

Flushing paper down a shitter = My Lai massacre

"Anybody see the documentary about gay Hasidics?"

On that note, why is it that homosexuality was specifically mentioned in the Bible? Nobody really talks about anything that isn't an issue, so that leads me to conclude that the shepherd boys were getting a lot of action out there on herd-watch.
Seriously though, pederasty and homosexuality are probably more widespread in the ME today than in the decadent West, and probably always have been; how else could you explain the religiously codified hatred of women that originated in this part of the world?

There's a saying coined by the military (I think) that goes: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way". Hysterical liberal twits like Sullivan and much of the Democratic leadership have proven incapable of leading, which is why they lose elections. They also can't seem to grasp the "follow" part, and so we are subjected to endless bleating and criticism, yet absolutely no viable alternatives. Fine. But the most galling thing about these half-wit cowards is that can't even manage getting out of the way. They want no part of this war; gotcha. They don't like how it's being fought; duly noted. But we are lucky enough to have guys that ARE willing to fight it; soldiers and leaders who are forced to do a shitty job and make awful decisions every day in order to protect both regular people and the pampered, cliquish bunch of elitist weasels like Sullivan and co. That is cosmically galling. It 's one thing to be a peace monkey idiot in the face of a sick death-cult like Al Qaeda; it's another thing entirely to hamstring the guys doing the dirty work of saving the fucking planet.
One more thing, it's all too easy to slur soldiers when you don't know any.

coutdown begins for Je$$e Jackson or Al $harpton to complain that culturally black music, otherwise known as 'rap', is being equated to torture.

because somewhere at sometime there is always someone offended by something.

good thing is, some of us just don't cry for those somebodies.

Acceptable coersive tactics? How 'bout letting excitable Andy do the interviewing. Of course beforehand (and when EA is out of earshot), have one of the guards tell the prisoner to be questioned that AE is gay . . . and sometimes forgets himself when interviewing someone AE thinks is cute. Just cannot keep his hands off the prisoner. Then have a second guard tell the prisoner that EA thinks the prisoner is cute.

I mean, it's not as if anything would *really* happen, and if the pirsoner is . . .uh . . . uncomfortable around gays, why how intolerant!

Interesting link from Jason van Steenwyck (sp?), who did some time as an infantry platoon leader with the Florida Guard in Iraq:

http://iraqnow.blogspot.com/2005/06/humiliation-call-for-papers.html

A quote:

* * * * * *

And the chief warrant running the detention facility was not aware of any studies or any other academic foundation undergirding the effectiveness of the Power and Ego Down strategy. It was sort of something everyone accepted.

Ok, it was a hell of a lot more fun, sure. But at times it seemed to me more rooted in childish sadism and glee in power than in any sound psychological practice.

* * * * * *

The responding question would be: do coercive techniques, which seriously hurt our international image and therefore our combat effectiveness, really work any better than tried-and-true questioning?

Once upon a time, Durbin's remarks would have earned him one of Sully's "Malkin, Derbyshire or Begala" awards. Instead, Andy says "more please." Now that Durbin has apologized, will Andy follow suit?

SparcVark,

To start off with, I sure wish Senator Durbin would raised the question in the rational way you have. Personally, I have no problem with engaging in rational discussion about whether the tactics being used are useful, legal, and/or moral. In fact, it should be encouraged. I try to do so whenever it's brought up to me by one particular coworker who tends toward conspiratorial Leftism.

Anyway, the one comment at the post you reference is: " Didn't the North Koreans and the Chinese do pretty well at getting our prisoners to talk?" True, they were, and they practised a more brutal form of "Ego Down" than has been revealed about tactics at Camp X-Ray. I don't think there would be any academic studies on this due to the nature of the material, and if studies exist I would imagine they only exist in a military context and would likely be classified to some extent.

So there's likely only anecdotal evidence available to civilians and low-level military personnel. I referenced this link in a comment yesterday regarding a documentary about this type of interrogation method: http://www.teamdelta.net/HistoryChannel.htm

It not only was an interesting demonstration of interrogation tactics in today's military, but also covered tactics from wars past, including the German interrogator the blogger you linked to mentioned in his post. Based on the demonstration I saw, it was highly successful.

An additional thought: we're concentrating quite a bit on coercive tactics that are in use due to the current news, yet in my reading on the Gitmo detainees I've read that cooperative detainees are afforded special privileges such as extended hours to play soccer and indoor bunks. So it's still the old carrot and the stick. We haven't forgotten that the carrot can be just as effective. You just won't see it talked about much because, frankly, how interesting or newsworthy is a cooperative detainee?

One of the main *utilitarian* factors in the question of [actual] torture is, what does it do to those who perform it? to those who order it / authorize it?

It is akin to the *utilitarian* reason that slavery is bad for a civilization; what it does to the slaveholder.

---------

Can we puhleeze dispense with worrying about "our image" in the world?!? It's beginning to sound like Tom Cruse berating his agent -- and look what his agent did to him! Talk about "Ego Down" -- but that's not important, now. What is important is the concept that if WE focus on a course of action guided by OUR morals and supported by OUR self-respect, most others will take our word for it.

The rest wouldn't like US if we gave 'em free ice cream and foot massages along with most of the foreign aid on the planet.

Squatch:

I'm sure horrific, limb-removing, cigarettes-to-the-forearms, basement-of-the-Lubyanka type torture would cause more people to talk. I hope to God that's not seriously on the agenda, or I'm going to have to start voting Democratic.

Claire:

The rest of the world? Try the American people. Would we now be talking about closing down Gitmo and apologizing to a region that hasn't had a humanitarian moment since 1095 if "our image" hadn't taken a hit? If the US public becomes convinced we're running torture chambers, they will demand a pullout of Iraq and we will lose this war. Like it or not, public relations is now a critically important portion of modern warfighting.

That Lubyanka Prison stuff is entirely possible to do, but we're told in the field we're not allowed to. The prevailing thought is that if you go after Haji's nuts with a pair of pliers, he'll say anything he thinks you want to hear to get the pliers off his nuts. I think ifyou go after Haji's nuts with the pliers, then you tell him if the info doesn't check out, you're coming back with a grinding wheel, he might be a bit more inclined to be truthful.

Durbin himself described his comments as an analogy:

'A form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects. '

Which was his point.

It's the moral equivalence that says 'because of a hundred at My Lai the hundreds of thousands slaughtered by the Communists are the same thing... '

When quite clearly they are not...

Does anybody else find it offensive that Sen. "TheDick" Turban Durbin(D) defends terrorists by comparing America's military to Fascists, Communists and blood-thirsty tyrants who slaughtered millions of their own people, then defends those remarks by quoting America's first (R)epublican president, Lincoln(R), who was expressing concerns about excess in the defense of America... from Slaveholding-Segregationist-Separatist (D)emocrats?

ACE - I think the real reason that Liberals will never admit that torture may be necessary is that they are so sneaky and untrustworthy themselves, that they think the right is too and would use the cheap and silly slippery slope argument (that they try to use all the time) against them. Once they've admitted that the facts may justify it in some cases, then they open themselves up to charges they they're opposing it just to hurt Bush and the war effort, which is true. They're so treacherous they've managed to outsmart themselves, and it wouldn't be the first time.

The only time Andy exhibits any "braveheart" behavior is when he's riding bareback.

'A form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects. '

What horseshit!!! Analogies like his are meaningless and totally unture. Though there is an analogy to be made bewtween a misquito biting our sagacious senator and me smashing Dick Dubins head in with a baseball bat in that they're both injuries done to him by an outside party, the analogy ends there. For the misquito it was just business, for me it would be a real pleasure!

The dick is merely trying to sound clever, something that all Liberals excel at, i.e., trying to sound clever. It is what passes in the Liberal world for substance and sagacity and is one of their most annoying qualities.