I'm curious. What is it that you like most about Reagan? His record breaking spending that tripled the debt, trading arms for hostages with Iran, or illegally funding the Contras against Congress's specific prohibition using drug money and money from selling arms to Iran?
I'm curious. What is it that you like most about Reagan? His record breaking spending that tripled the debt, trading arms for hostages with Iran, or illegally funding the Contras against Congress's wishes using drug money?
I'm curious. What is it that you like most about Reagan? His record breaking spending that tripled the debt, ....
Why would that be an issue for you given that you support Obama who has spent more than Reagan did over 8 years every single year he has been in office?
So did Bush. Budgets have a tendency to continue their expenses from President to President. Obama has grown the budget less than any President since Eisenhower.
A DP poll, with 12 votes...wtf? Is this a joke?
The old ...but Bush did it ... excuse huh?
I thought Obama had moved us foreword so we don't have to go back to the failed Bush policies that destroyed the economy.
The same policies you now say Bush did too in defense of Obama's failure.
:lamo:lamo
Bush 43 did it.
So did:
Clinton
Bush 41
Reagan
Carter
Nixon
LBJ
and Kennedy
But since Obama did it - and to a lower extent than ANY of the above presidents, well, THAT means that Obama's out to destroy America!!!!!
Gee, those who were actually involved in the investigation said that no, 'enhanced interrogation' was NOT an effective factor in finding bin Laden.
Guy, there was a time when America's very future was in doubt. Troops went to the man in charge because they wanted to torture the 'truth' out of their prisoners in order to not lose the war. Here was their commander's reply:
“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.”
You may have heard of that commander - his name was George Washington, and yes, America's future was still very much in doubt, in infinitely greater danger of defeat than anything Osama bin Laden could have dreamed. And yet he still forbade torture.
Back in the mid 2000's, two dozen men who were tasked with interrogating German prisoners of war came out as a group against Bush's torture, and said they could get higher quality intelligence from a prisoner with a game of chess than all the waterboarding ever could, because once those hardline Nazis figured out that their enemy wasn't as evil and horrible as Hitler had told them, they sang like birds:
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
And any military historian worth his salt will tell you that intelligence was probably the single greatest single factor - other than perhaps Hitler's hubris - in the allied victory over the axis.
So you can listen to your right-wing buddies about torture...or you can listen to the men of the greatest generation who dealt with the Nazis, and you can listen to George Washington. Your choice.
Not destroy it, to force some arbitrary Western European devolution would be more accurate.
It's too bad in the process of spreading his cancer millions have to suffer.
But it's typical of left wing ideolouges. Long on vision, short on comprehension.
This is a horrible post.
Feel free to refute it, then!
It implies that people always have a choice: either play nice or play mean to get information. That implication is very wrong, so the rest of the post falls flat.
You know, your 'logic' fails badly when compared to the stated experience of the interrogators in World War II - who came out as a group to speak out against torture as an ineffective way to garner quality intel.
I could say that I was an interrogator only a few years ago, perhaps their memories are faltering. But the reality is that no, my logic doesn't fail. You just think that. Of course there are better ways than torture, and no one said otherwise. Honey catches more flies than vinegar: everyone knows that. But when the honey isn't working, and there's something that you absolutely must know, and you know the individual knows it...
See, it's not an 'either or' proposition. It's a series of escalations. But you don't know that, because you have no experience in it.
Wrong. Because if the prisoner thinks that it's an 'either-or', just like when he's being tortured (either give us intel or...!), he's gonna give you whatever comes to mind that he thinks might avoid that "or" event. He'll tell you a thousand things...and it's doggone hard trying to figure out the two or three important things he said among that thousand.
However, if you treat the prisoner as your friend and show them that no, you aren't the ogre that he's been told - and then he sees that no, he's not going to be tortured like all his buddies said, there's a part of him that begins to realize that hey, my guys were wrong, these guys aren't so bad...and THEN they start to open up with REAL intel, quality stuff, the stuff you really need to know.
THAT, sir, is what the WWII interrogators were trying to tell you. Show them that yeah, America really does try to wear the white hat and play by the rules even with our enemies...and sooner or later in their eyes we're standing on a moral pedestal again. But when we torture, they find out...and not only do we not get the intel we need, but it turns into the best damn recruiting tool we could give them.
George Washington was right.
So were the WWII interrogators.
Dubya and Cheney were flat wrong...and need to stand trial before The Hague for war crimes.
You have no experience with this.
You have no experience with this.
Do you deny that when the other side finds out that we used torture on their people, that it becomes a great recruiting tool for them?
And do you agree that we should stick with the tenets of Army FM 34-52?
No, I don't.
Why not?
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