CIA lied over brutal interrogations

[NicD]

JuniorD said:

NicD said:

can I say this again:

what if you started the body count earlier? Say at the beginning of the Saddam era?

Oh you mean the era in which the US propped him up?

mmm, OK, when then, AD?

Do you blame all the worlds ills on the US?
Maybe you are right, but not sure it is helpful.

[zuby84]

NicD said:

can I say this again:

what if you started the body count earlier? Say at the beginning of the Saddam era?

What if we went further back to the times of slavery?

[smegmore]

zuby84 said:

What if we went further back to the times of slavery?

I would suggest that you research the origins of slavery in the islamic world before you say any more on the subject.

People who live in glass houses and all that.

[zuby84]

smegmore said:

I would suggest that you research the origins of slavery in the islamic world before you say any more on the subject.

People who live in glass houses and all that.

You have rather obtusely missed a sarcastic point. The sentence wasn't meant to start a discussion on the origins of slavery, but was meant to describe a random historical period to show that statistics/casualties etc... can be taken from periods in history to back-up whichever point of view one happens to have.

[Jimbeaux]

JuniorD said:

Jimbeaux said:

JuniorD said:

Jimbeaux said:

JuniorD said:

XJ Flyer said:

However when push comes to shove at the end of the day winning is all about being a more vicious bd to those who we have to fight than they are to us.

Trouble is, the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of people who have died as a result of our actions in the "war against terror" or its aftermath weren't even in the fight in the first place.

Hundreds of thousands? There is that oft-thrown about figure yet again. Where does one come by such a large figure?

Give me your figure.

I don't have one, never claimed to. You are the one using that wild figure, where did you get it from?

Surely a man of your deep appreciation of war would not think 100-200k would not be an unreasonable guess, given that the number of dead in Iraq alone since 2003 and attributable to the conflict which we conjured up is widely believed to be way more. Try 500,000.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/13...

So, as per your link, you are referring to all Iraqis killed, including the Iraqi soldiers who died in the war. Also, it mentions the Al Queda insurgents killing civilians. Most civilians killed were done so by AQ, fellow Muslims. In the past, that large figure was attributed by some on here as US killing of civilians, which is silly at best. Oh, and my "appreciation of war" leads me to care less for it than those whose closest understanding of it is PH. Not a shot at you, just a general comment.

Edited by Jimbeaux on Tuesday 16th December 04:02

[NicD]

zuby84 said:

smegmore said:

I would suggest that you research the origins of slavery in the islamic world before you say any more on the subject.

People who live in glass houses and all that.

You have rather obtusely missed a sarcastic point. The sentence wasn't meant to start a discussion on the origins of slavery, but was meant to describe a random historical period to show that statistics/casualties etc... can be taken from periods in history to back-up whichever point of view one happens to have.

yes, that was the point of my question to the poster who claimed the huge fatality figure with no attempt to break it down and attribute the component deaths.

[rohrl]

I thought this article might be interesting reading for those who have been saying that waterboarding isn't really torture or that the whole CIA torture thing is a put-up job by the Democrats.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mccain-japanese-hanged...

CBS article said:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain reminded people Thursday that some Japanese were tried and hanged for torturing American prisoners during World War II with techniques that included waterboarding.

"There should be little doubt from American history that we consider that as torture otherwise we wouldn't have tried and convicted Japanese for doing that same thing to Americans," McCain said during a news conference...

[KareemK]

Rather unsurprisingly the majority of Americans of all demographics (yes all demographics) believe that Torture can be justified.

http://io9.com/pretty-much-every-u-s-demographic-g...

I'll bet the terrorists are running out of application forms.

[IroningMan]

KareemK said:

Rather unsurprisingly the majority of Americans of all demographics (yes all demographics) believe that Torture can be justified.

http://io9.com/pretty-much-every-u-s-demographic-g...

I'll bet the terrorists are running out of application forms.

Personally I don't condone it, but I suspect you'd get a similar result in most countries: by and large those wishes would be reflected in the actions of those countries security services, too.