35 thoughts on “America & ISIL share a common bond: torture

  1. Congratulations Zach, that is one of the most grotesque examples of moral equivalency that I have ever encountered.

    1. Denis,

      If you want to make gratuitous insults and unsupported claims, please take that somewhere else. Torture isn’t just grotesque, it’s wrong, just like extortion and murder.

      Since you don’t have any basis for your insult against Zach, please apologize.

    2. Zach I trust you are sharp enough to realize I am not insulting you. I am taking exception to the idea that we are on the same moral plane as ISIS. That is the notion I find grotesque. We roughed up, and for the sake of argument, tortured folks who masterminded the 9-11 attacks, for the purpose of gathering intelligence. It is fine I suppose to stand against such behavior, though I don’t, but to suggest, as you did, that we are like the gratuitous beheaders of ISIS is indeed grotesque. I stand by my original statement.

  2. It is mazing that the Left thinks it has the moral high ground byt declaring torturing terrorists to save American lives is wrong. Terrorists have no rights, they kill indiscriminately. They are not soldiers in a declared war. They are not cover by Geneva convention. The Japs during WWII did not sign Geneva. They considered soldiers that surrendered, including theirs, to be trash, unworthy of life. In the movie: Unbroken, they tortured everyone. You mean that we should treat them with the same manner the Geneva accords demanded? I have three kids in special forces, they have been over in iraq, Afghan. and Korea for 12 years. They have seen what the terrorists do. an eye for an eye.
    So if we knew that a dirty bomb was being planted in down town Madison by terrorists and we capture the leaders that we should not waterboard them to stop them from killing 100,000 or more people and rendering madison uninhabitable for 100 years? is that your point? Waterboarding is nothing.

    1. Dohnal, you wrote: “I have three kids in special forces,”

      1. How many of them are on disability?

      “Why suicide rate among veterans may be more than 22 a day”
      http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/21/us/22-veteran-suicides-a-day/

      2. Did they serve with any soldiers who came from wealthy families?

      3. Since Osama bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia, why did we invade Iraq?

      The Powell Doctrine states that a list of questions all have to be answered affirmatively before military action is taken by the United States:

      Is a vital national security interest threatened?
      Do we have a clear attainable objective?
      Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
      Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
      Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
      Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
      Is the action supported by the American people?
      Do we have genuine broad international support?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_Doctrine

      4. Who would Jesus torture?

    2. Bobby,

      Having looked at what your write, knowing your children are in special forces doesn’t reassure me one bit about US safety anywhere in the world. If US intelligence knew of a Madison, WI bomb AND who the leaders were, but had lost the bomb, what does that tell you about the “intelligence,” services. What a dumb fu*king argument for torture!

      JC,

      Your intellectually sophisticated level of discourse has NO effect on the troll squad though most of us reading it understand what you are getting at. Obviously you’ll never get an intelligent response.

  3. Great news! The Taliban just killed over 125 school aged children!!! Sweet! Reports indicate they Burned a teacher alive in front of first graders!!! So sweet! Many of the dead children had their heads cut off!!! Awesome!!!

    Finally the stand off ended when military officials gave a hydration enema to one of the captors then played Christmas music to them… reportedly the combatants gave up due to the absolute brutality of Gwen Stefanni singing silent night!!!

      1. JOHN!!! Stop saying I’m for our against things that we are not talking about. For the record I’m against first graders being decapitated. I’m also against baby rape. I’m against teacher burning alive. Are you for baby rape JOHN?

  4. DEAD MURDERED CHILDREN!!!

    That is who we are dealing with. Monsters that kill first graders and chip their heads off!!!

    Meanwhile in America we think talking to them will get then to surrendor.

    JOHN: Must be those damn oligarchs!!!

  5. Zach, part of Chris’ and Denis’ interest in this might be a deflection from Bradley William Stone.

    “Manhunt intensifies for suspect in Pa. murder spree”

    “…He served in the Marines and the Marine Reserves from 2002 to 2011, including a combat tour in Iraq in 2008. He was discharged honorably as a sergeant. He won numerous awards and medals for his service. Court records show that Stone suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, the Bucks County Courier Times reported.

    Stone was treated for unspecified combat-related physical injuries, and was also receiving continuing treatment for PTSD, Montgomery County records show. Stone pleaded guilty in November 2013 to a drunken-driving crash. As part of his sentence, he was participating in a county rehabilitation program for veterans.”

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/16/pennsylvania-manhunt-six-dead/20471403/

    1. John, great point, look what we are doing to ourselves as a country.

      Off Topic (but curious)

      Maybe just one swipe at each, in the whack-a-troll game won’t encourage their stupidity. There are a couple of threads that would benefit from your knowledge, observations, judgements and timely links that don’t involve chasing the nits around as much.

      Also, I don’t know a lot about IT, web hosting and such, so if you do, could the owner/operator of ISP potentially be commenting under several names, each appearing to be coming from independent sources, not from behind proxy servers?

      1. Google “persona management software.” What you fine will mostly refer to some programs being used by the US government/military, but there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be made available to the Republican Party of Wisconsin for use by its trolls, including the multi-monikered one infesting this site and that of WEAU TV. The popular term seems to be “astroturfing.”

  6. JOHN, SERIOUS QUESTION HERE!

    Seriously, if you could have ordered waterboarding of a terrorist and prevented the murder of the school children that JUST HAPPENED, would you agree to it.

    Yes or no would suffice.

    1. “CHRIS, SERIOUS QUESTION HERE!

      Seriously, if Obama would have stopped the drone attacks, which have killed so many children and played a direct role in this latest retaliation, would you support him in that?

      Yes or no would suffice.”

    2. “CHRIS, SERIOUS QUESTION HERE!

      Seriously, if Obama could have stopped Israel from killing 300 school children that JUST HAPPENED, would you support him in that?

      Yes or no would suffice.”

      “Gaza: Nearly 300 Palestinian children killed, says UN
      Toll expected to rise as investigators continue to check reports of child deaths, making up almost a third of all civilian casualties”

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11007940/Gaza-Nearly-300-Palestinian-children-killed-says-UN.html

    3. “CHRIS, SERIOUS QUESTION HERE!

      Seriously, if you could have ordered waterboarding of U.S. soldiers and prevented the murder of the school children that JUST HAPPENED, would you agree to it.

      Yes or no would suffice.”

      “U.S. forces killed 8 civilians in Afghanistan, mostly children, in new incident, Karzai says”

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/us-forces-killed-8-civilians-most-of-them-children-in-new-incident-karzai-says/2014/01/15/939e3244-7e17-11e3-97d3-b9925ce2c57b_story.html

    4. “CHRIS, SERIOUS QUESTION HERE!

      Seriously, if you could have ordered waterboarding of U.S. soldiers and prevented the murder of the school children and other civilians, would you agree to it?

      Yes or no would suffice.”

      “Bradley Manning Uncovered U.S. Torture, Abuse, Soldiers Laughing As They Killed Innocent Civilians”

      “…Manning released this graphic video of a U.S. Apache helicopter attack on a group of people gathered in Baghdad. Two were employees of the Reuters news agency. A member of the helicopter crew refers to the “dead bastards” he killed, and the crew lights up a passing van that stopped to help victims of the first round of gunfire.

      Reuters unsuccessfully requested a copy of the video under the Freedom of Information Act, but only Manning revealed it to the world. An Army investigation into the attack, released only after Manning’s leak was published, concluded that the helicopter crew had followed the rules of engagement.

      2. The Reykjavik-13 cable
      Far less known than the Apache video was this classified 2010 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik released on Feb. 18, 2010. The first of Manning’s leaks to be published, it caused an immediate sensation in Iceland for its frank discussion of U.S. indifference toward problems in the small island nation’s banking sector.

      The cable’s release energized the activists in Iceland who edited “Collateral Murder.”

      3. The Iraq War Logs
      As part of his work as an Army intelligence analyst, Manning had access to a wealth of sensitive Army documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Called SIGACTS (significant activities), in military parlance, they detailed nighttime raids and improvised explosives attacks with intimate on-the-ground reports from U.S. troops.

      Manning gave WikiLeaks nearly 400,000 SIGACTS from Iraq. They were published in October 2010. The Pentagon had always maintained that it did not keep track of civilian casualties in Iraq, but the independent Iraq Body Count website used the SIGACTS to confirm and update its count of deaths in the conflict.

      As of this month, the Iraq Body Count’s Josh Dougherty related, the organization had added 4,000 deaths to its database as a result of Manning’s leaks and was likely to add another 10,000.

      “These and thousands of others like them are known to the world today only because Bradley Manning could no longer in good conscience collude with an official policy of the Bush and Obama administrations to abuse secrecy and ‘national security’ to erase them from history,” Dougherty wrote on the group’s website. “If Manning deserves any punishment at all for this, certainly his three years already served, and the disgraceful abuse he was made to suffer during it, is more than enough…”

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/bradley-manning-leaks_n_3788126.html

      There’s video of the Apache slaughtering civilians in Baghdad.

      As far as I know, no one has ever been held responsible for any of these murders. The only one in jail is Pfc. Chelsea Manning, who leaked the video.

      How much longer will you support a U.S. foreign policy that guarantees more attacks on U.S. soil?

  7. “CHRIS, SERIOUS QUESTION HERE!

    Seriously, if you could have ordered waterboarding of U.S. soldiers and prevented the murder of the school children that JUST HAPPENED, would you agree to it.

    Yes or no would suffice.”

    “Soldier Sentenced to Life Without Parole for Killing 16 Afghans”

    “… What happened next was brought into vivid detail by the testimony of the nine Afghan men and boys.

    Wearing traditional Afghan shalwar kameez and turbans as they faced a wall of crew cuts and crisp blue military dress uniforms, the Afghans spoke in Pashto of this unknown American who burst into their lives like a camouflaged grim reaper. They recalled how he hit and kicked members of their family, gunned down defenseless old men, mothers and children, and set their bodies on fire.

    Several American service members also testified to the massacre’s outward ripples, describing how a wounded 7-year-old girl named Zardana had to be taught to walk and use the bathroom again, how Afghans seethed with outrage in the Panjwai district, and how the American military had to suspend operations in the area after the killings. ….”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/soldier-gets-life-without-parole-in-deaths-of-afghan-civilians.html

  8. JOHN. So the answer is off course no for you.

    also I will have to check my history but I don’t seem to have ever said I support Obama and his use of drone attacks in the manner that he uses them.

    clearly you support the murder of innocent children in schools by Mad Men Killers I understand completely

    1. Thanks for confirming you read my links.

      Noted that, so far, you’ve made no objection to waterboarding U.S. soldiers.

      1. JOHN, wakeboarding is awesome. If they are wakeboarding in off time, what’s the problem? We shouldn’t be wakeboarding using government dollars!!! Another great point JOHN!!!

          1. Do you even have to ask? Chris and his fellow pro-torturers posting here are disgusting and blind. To me this matches if not exceeds the evil of the Nazi concentration camps – and this was done by Americans. As usual you have posted a link that enlightens and unfortunately, horrifies.

              1. So I’m reading that the Jessica Chastain character from Zero Dark Thirty was modeled on a real person who the New Yorker says is one of the key decision-makers at the CIA for much of the torture: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/unidentified-queen-torture

                What do you make of that? In the movie she didn’t have a college-degree – if that’s true, what we have here is another ideologue who gets promoted and promoted perpetrating extreme damage along the way. Now why does that sound familiar?

  9. it is of course ironic that zack would post something trying to place isil in the same light as the US. only to have a bunch of Taliban terrorist murder hundreds of innocent children burning people alive chopping first graders heads off ya then you have the Taliban admit it and say it was justified sure that sounds like the US yeah that sounds like us

    1. ISIS/ISIL originated and was funded and armed by the CIA and other US operatives along with other ME interests (Israel), with US tax dollars, to attempt to overthrow Assad in Syria, under Obombya most recently. They then went rogue. You definitely need to expand on your sources of reliable information.

      ISIS is not only a reflection of the US, it is the bastard progeny of our US “Intelligence,” service, just as the radical Bin Laden lead Taliban (at the time) was the offspring of CIA weaponized, trained and funded efforts to expel the Russians from Afghanistan, which has morphed into its myriad forms and factions today.

      We created the chaos by destroying all civil order in the name of “democracy,” and all these “factions,” are seeking to fill the voids. Study some history before you open your digital pie-hole about this, please.

      1. Because we supplied money to a group that (now) goes by ISIL or ISIS or whatever does NOT mean we operate like them. I guess their RAPE handbook is similar to our bill of rights. And I guess there extensive use of murder and beheadings and terror bombs and the like are very similar to our modern day football.

        Clearly equating the USA with ISIL tactics is laughable and an insult to everyone here.

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