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sturner wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

user wrote:

Listen, BUSH has TIES to the Bin Laden family.

I'm fairly certain none of the Bush's have taken up arms with AQ groups and shot at troops though.

But it's ok if they financed him? Just asking.

Bought gas too did you?

Yeah, but with my oil holdings, I suppose I'm a small scale producer in my own right. I only deal in Texas and Oklahoma oil.

So, where on the tape is this guy waterboarded?

What's the issue with this particulare interrogation, that is at all controversial?

bratboy wrote:

1) The video of it was released.
2) The individual being interrogated is a minor.

Who  was on a battlefield throwing hand grenades.

everlong205 wrote:

bratboy wrote:

1) The video of it was released.
2) The individual being interrogated is a minor.

Who  was on a battlefield throwing hand grenades.

Along with thousands of other people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

bratboy wrote:

....and yet still a minor.

So then clearly Al Qaeda's best move is to recruit people under the age of 16. THat way, they can carry out any number of attacks, and were they ever captured we can not even interrogate them. Leaving aside whether we interrogate them harshly or not harshly, we can't interrogate them at all.

bratboy wrote:

everlong205 wrote:

So then clearly Al Qaeda's best move is to recruit people under the age of 16.

I would guess that children are good to recruit for many reasons, not the least of which being that they're easily impressionable.

THat way, they can carry out any number of attacks, and were they ever captured we can not even interrogate them. Leaving aside whether we interrogate them harshly or not harshly, we can't interrogate them at all.

Those are rules YOU imposed upon this discussion, not anyone else.

so when is it ok to interrogate a minor? I would think that, by bringing up that fact, you are suggesting that somehow we can never interrogate minors in any way or that he shoudldn't be interrogated because he's a minor. Otherwise, how is it an objection to the interrogation?

Last edited by everlong205 (2008-07-16 9:10 pm)

ScifiterX wrote:

Interrogate, maybe; torture, smurf no. It's not even ok to torture an adult. If you believe it is or that the smurf they described isn't torture, you seriously scare the smurf out of me and I wish you'd vacate the bloody planet.

We have the interrogation on tape. WHere is he tortured? Scaring someone though is not necessariliy torture. Being interrogated by the enemy though is a scary thing. BEing interrogated by the cops is a scary thing. He's man enough to throw hand grenades, he should be man enough to at the very least face an interrogation that any other people caught on a battlefield will face.

everlong205 wrote:

ShnickyShnack wrote:

everlong205 wrote:

Who  was on a battlefield throwing hand grenades.

Along with thousands of other people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

WHo's family are also terrorists.

Who is family are also terrorists?

jerwin wrote:

everlong205 wrote:

ShnickyShnack wrote:

Along with thousands of other people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

WHo's family are also terrorists.

Who is family are also terrorists?

Bah, just the usual nonsense.

Great article, Susie. Thanks for the link.

This Omar kid is obviously a victim of an extremely abusive childhood. His dad is one of the most whacked-out fundamentalists I've ever heard of. The whole situation is obviously his fault more than anyone else's.

Omar's situation apparently worsened when he gave his interrogators an "answer they didn't like." I notice that the article did fail to elaborate on just what that answer was. Probably something like, "Death to all infidels!" or "Go smurf yourselves!" in Farsi. His brother, on the other hand, is not being tortured because, given the opportunity to cooperate or be a smurf and get tortured some more, he decided to cooperate. I'm thinking that about the time they decided to use you as a human mop to clean up your own urine is when it would be really smart to lose the "infidels must die" attitude and start cooperating.

As to the issue of Omar Khadr being a minor, is he? What's the age of consent in Afghanistan? Do people still get married there when they're 14? The article actually makes it sound like Omar is, if anything, the most mature member of his family. His situation is definitely unfortunate and I don't think it's his fault ... like I said, I blame his father more than anybody ... but I certainly don't think it would be very smart to let him go. Seems like he's determined to be an Al Qaeda terrorist at this point and I doubt if he can be rehabilitated.

As to the issue of "torture," if the FBI thinks the treatment of inmates at Gitmo was "disgusting and stupid," there's a really, really good chance that what's going on there is, indeed, disgusting and stupid. As the article pointed out, if you drive someone stark raving crazy (by whatever means) while you're interrogating them, then obviously anything they say is "unreliable as intelligence and useless in court."

The real concern is whether 75-80% of the detainees actually are innocent chumps rounded up by warlords, mercenaries and outlaws for the $5,000-per-head reward the military offered for Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Afghanistan. Every time I ask myself if military personnel would really be that gullible, given my own experience with the military, the only answer that pops into my head is, "smurf yes, they're even more stupid than that." Driving Al Qaeda members crazy is kind of a moot point. If someone is prepared to be a suicide bomber, how much damage does it really do to subject them to interrogation techniques that will make them suicidal, homicidal and delusional? Al Qaeda members are already all that and more by definition. It's a lot different to subject innocent men to that sort of treatment, though ... a lot different. We could easily end up with a few hundred psychotic prisoners that were detained for no reason, and then what do we do? Let them go? Doesn't sound like a really bright idea at this point, even though we could just send them back to their native countries when we did. We'll probably have to institutionalize them for years, maybe even for life, and on the taxpayers' dime, too.

Omar Khadr is quite obviously not one of the innocent ones, though, and letting him go would be irresponsible to say the least.