Shorter Bryan Preston SeeDubya: I support torture and we absolutely must torture to keep us safe but anyone who claims they were tortured is a lying leftist and I question the timing.
Bryan Preston SeeDubya is lucky he has never met Tommy Franks.
*** Update ***
My bad, someone named SeeDubya wrote this, so my point is completely invalidated for all wingnuts. For the rest of planet Earth, we still understand that if you torture people and support a policy of torture, you can’t be surprised if people claim they were tortured. Even if the “timing” gets your panties in a bunch.
jake
This was my favorite:
Shorter: Lookit me,I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about!
ATTENTION fRightWing Wanksticks: All lawyers do pro bono work, the ABA expects them to do pro bono work and it’s not all defending widows and orphans.
Lawyers who do pro bono do not “divert fees” from their paying clients and their clients expect them to take pro bono cases because it makes the law firm look good which makes the client look good when they’re being sued for burying 20 tons of toxic waste under a school yard. In short, no one but the most ignorant bacon streaks have a problem with this issue or understanding this issue.
So please, the next time you wish to raise the specter of lawyers defending tarrist for free, we would think it a great kindness if you would instead go fuck yourself dead.
Regards,
Americans with more than two brain cells
Alan
I remember feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach when those pictures from Abu Ghraib came out. I supported the war and felt those despicable souls who did that shit destroyed our moral high ground in ousting Saddam. And many on the right, I though, felt the same.
It sickens me the right now embraces torture. And they call the the left Godless.
J sub d
I can’t be a moral, patriotic American because of my religious beliefs (atheist). Yet, these sanctimonious, Jesus loving, Christians, somehow can justify torture while my hellbound, non-believing, apostate self finds it repugnant, apalling and just friggin’ EVIL.
Go figure.
craigie
The question is often asked: Is our children torturing?
Wilfred
In a simpler time people just called their behavior what is was: Hypocrisy. That was back when being called a hypocrite was something every decent person dreaded and worked hard to avoid.
They still do. These right-wing hypocrites are not decent people at all.
cleek
every day it seems, the religious show me a new reason to dismiss religion.
yay!
demimondian
No. We give you a new reason to dismiss *us*, not religion. The confound is something which the non-religious often fail to recognize.
Kynn
But how do they feel about the FAIR TAX?
Walker
Despite what they call themselves, they are not Christians. They are idolaters that have subverted the teachings of Christ. They are all going to hell.
J sub D
Many of my theist friends make the same point, it’s a good one. OTOH, its not hard to convince an evil man do evil, it takes religion, or a noble cause, to convince a good man to do evil.
For the record, I know good and bad theists as well as good and bad atheists. I’m merely convinced that “religion” is an untenable hypothesis.
Dreggas
Let’s just face it. The right longs for a return to the days of the inquisition, the crusades and just about everything they glorify including their own stupid ass martyrdom. You think Salem was a case of hysteria? Nope they wanna repeat it. They’d even go so far as to reinstate public executions if they could. They didn’t learn from history so they wouldn’t repeat it, they learned from history and took notes so they could do it “right” this time.
J sub D
The left and right are both guilty of that.
bdr
I suggest this formulation:
I support torturing anyone who doesn’t believe in American idealism until the respect for American idealism is again universal.
Dreggas
No doubt that both sides are guilty, however last I looked the left wasn’t demanding that we should be a christian nation with christian leaders re-enacting the crusades by bombing the hell out of the “other”. Nor for that matter insinuating those who aren’t christian are “less” than them.
Schadenfreude will be truly complete when they demand that only christians be allowed to buy or sell and should be marked so that they’ll be known and anyone without the mark will be persecuted…
cleek
point taken, but i meant what i wrote: given that religion fails to impart the morals it claims to be the source of, what’s the point ? when someone asks “on a practical level, what’s religion good for?”, the inevitable answer is “it makes people better by giving them a set of morals to live by.” well, clearly religion fails to do that: the partisan divide in the torture debate these days puts the irreligious on the moral high ground while the most vocal of the religious are demanding immorality (i’m generalizing. obviously the left isn’t 100% atheist and the right isn’t 100% conservative Christian). but maybe the stakes aren’t high enough: if people value their [alleged] immortal souls less than easy political opportunity, or temporary illusions of safety, maybe religions need bigger sticks and sweeter carrots.
i know it’s easy to turn that around and claim that the problem isn’t religion per se, but that people are failing to live up to what religions dictate. to me, that sounds a little like the old complaint from defenders of Communism: Communism hasn’t failed; people have failed to implement Communism properly. well, maybe that’s because Communism is something that simply can’t be implemented, given human nature. and that means we have no reason to take Communism seriously as a way to organize governments. likewise, religion does not live up to its promises, and can’t, given human nature. so, i can dismiss it, when looking at ways to live my own life.
Dreggas
So do Aesop’s fables which were written long before Jebus supposedly lived and contain many of the same lessons…funny that.
jake
And then we will duck behind a nice thick wall until the fundies finish rampaging around the place screaming about the Number of the Beast.
I of course would not suggest picking them off in the confusion. That would go against my principles as a Secular Humanist Lapsed Catholic Dirty Hippy.
Zifnab
I’m anti-Death Penalty. That said, I’m fully in support of public executions. Put it on TV every time the state or the country decides to take a life. Then see how many people come back to the question with “I don’t care.”
That said, SeeDubya says John Cole is ReeTarDed:
See John you didn’t “get the point”. SeeDubya is questioning the “timing” of Gitmo lawyers. He “never opposed the decisions of individual lawyers to represent terrorists…” just the decision of individual lawyers to represent terrorists FOR FREE. You didn’t see Ken Lay or Gonzo getting free legal advice? They paid out with hard earned cash provided by their substantial investment portfolios and lavishly wealthy corporate friends. The fact that a goat herder from Afghanistan needs to go crawling to the ACLU-kissing Center For Constitutional Rights is more than evidence enough that these guys are guilty mother fuckers. Guilty in the court of free handouts. An unpardonable offense in the US of A.
demimondian
I don’t know that it has one.
My own belief is something I’d often just as soon be without; it imposes duties on me which I don’t appreciate, requires me to look like a fool, and is generally not a socially positive thing. But there it is, whether I like it or not, I believe in God and in His Son, and despite my best attempts to shed that belief, continue to do so. It’s certainly irrational, but, then again, so is my belief that the world exists at all — solipsism is at least intellectually consistent, if dull — so I have learned to live with it.
What I know from my own experience is that the fact that I feel required to do something which makes me look stupid for no possible benefit (e.g. defend my own belief) has made me much more willing to look stupid when I know that it does count. Just on the basis of that one change, I’m clearly a far better and braver person for my Christianity.
Cain
I’m not sure agree 100% here. Yes, it’s true but we as homo-sapiens require some kind of end goal because nobody knows why we’ve evolved and sitting around on this earth? Because we’re self aware we question what we are doing here and where we go from here. Religion tries to answer these questions and gives us a purpose. Concepts like family, love, compassion and others were created by religion. I seem to recall in the Dark Ages that familial relations weren’t even accounted for till religion took hold. (well in Europe, the East was in a different stage altogether)
The bar has to set high because we have to struggle for it. We thrive under that. (gads, I think I’m sounding like Captain Kirk or Picard haha) Anyways, religion hasn’t failed us so much as we aren’t using our gifts of our own intellect as a check. If we blindly follow religion or religious leaders without healthy skepticism then that’s our fault not religion.
In Hindu philsophy (vedanta), they have this interesting idea: Here are a set of rules, they are merely suggestions but we don’t say that this is the only way to do it. But we think that this way works. Feel free to try others. If you can reach the Divine, then that’s great. (I have a source for this, but I lost the book I was reading) Of course, in reality this doesn’t work out because such discussions are beyond the grasp of common man who really just wants the Cliff notes because he’s got too much other crap going on like feeding the family than to worry about this. Give us the short cut, give us the rules and we can just deal with it. That’s when of course a charlatan will take advantage. So matter how cool a relgion might be, or accepting you’re going to get stupid shit like “wife burning, Sati, the inquisition, or whatever other crap that religion doesn’t condone”. But we can’t just say that religion is not living up to it’s promises. We have to continue to struggle towards that goal. I believe Muslims called that ‘jihad’. heh.
cain
laneman
Wilfred and Walker are both spot on.
KCinDC
We’ll also see how many come back with “More execution porn, please!” In today’s environment, I fear they might outnumber those who are disgusted. Public executions were a popular means of entertainment back when we had them.
I suppose that’s the silver lining in the destruction of the waterboarding videos. At least we won’t have them on the web for wingnuts to use for self-gratification, along with their Danny Pearl videos (and not seeing any incongruity in cherishing both).
J sub D
The PDRK fills soccor stadiums with folks who want to witness some good, ol’ fashioned, public executions. Not a good idea.
Cindrella Ferret
I will never go to the Fair again! That is my way of protesting this new tax.
Bryan does have this post about the WaPo revelation that Pelosi et al were aware of the “enhanced” interrogation methods.
A money quote from Lambert at Corrente:
Well, I guess now I know why impeachment was “off the table.”
What the wingers fail to realize is that reasonable Republicans and Democrats expect our leaders to be honest and respect the Constitution. Some of the loudest complaints are coming from Glenn Greenwald, Atrios and other liberal bloggers. In other words the Vichy Democrats are in deep doo doo.
Rotten quislings, each one of them.
Chad N. Freude
We don’t have to. Witness the popularity and profitability of the movies “Saw XVI” and “Hostel CXII”. Executions on TV would combine the allure of gorefest films and reality TV. Viewership would be HUGE!
(“And the Sade-ie for best lethal injection goes to …”)
srv
John, you better be more careful. Jim Henley had a snark about Mark Steyns book and misattributed a quote, after calling him a racist. 600+ comments and still going.
We need more silly wankfests here.
jake
Sad.
But true.
Another stinkin’ award show would in fact be the worst thing about SnuffTeeVee.
cleek
and then Fox would run a contest to pick the person to flip the switch on a serial rapist.
Bruce Moomaw
Take a look at Glenn Greenwald’s revelation that Jay Rockefeller and Pelosi (through her selection of Silvestre Reyes) are even more intimately entangled in the torture scandal than the new Post article makes out.
Just lovely. Well, the fact that we can no longer by any stretch of the imagination utilize the torture issue in a Democrat-vs.-Republican political morality play does not remove us of our obligation to get rid of it — and the only effective way to get rid of it is clearly to purge the public, once and for all, of the idea that there are anything more than extremely rare situations in which it might be even STRATEGICALLY worthwhile. Until we do that, the torture advocates will now have a new, tremendously powerful political argument to the voters that we should retain it (as Bryan P. is already eagerly showing us). The case for the Dems to put some anti-torture military man (Sen. Webb?) on their ticket is now even stronger — in fact, at this point I’d say it’s damn near imperative (which naturally means that they won’t be smart enough to do it). Once again, there’s an excellent chance that the country will end up acquiescing in frequent torture, and bewailing that fact only decades later, when it’s safely too late to actually punish anyone for it. (See “My Lai, Massacre of”.)
grumpy realist
SRV, if you want silly wankfests, I invite you to take a peep at the Fair Tax thread.
(For really silly wankfests, go back into the archives and pull out some of the Darrellized threads…..oh, you mean a wankfest that made SENSE? )
creeper
I tend to think that religion is an expression or reflection of some of these things, and that, say, certain family values (for example a nuclear family, or patriarchy) can be transported/spread/preserved via religion. To claim that these concepts were created by religion seems somewhat over the top.
Was there no family, love or compassion before religion allegedly dictated it into existence? Could you back this up with something?
dr. luba
Silly me, I thought these were HUMAN attributes. So, without religion, the family would disintegrate, no one would give a damn about anyone else, and there would be not love? Not even mother love?
Odd, I’m an atheist, but spend several months a year volunteering in foreign countries to help poor women (India) and orphans (Ukraine). My “Christian” acquaintances give a bit of money to their local church and think they have done their duty to the poor.
And I recall a certain religous leader who said:
“And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” Matthew 19:29
And “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Matthew 10:24-27
Christian family values?
jenniebee
I’m with Zif. Justice, in all its forms, ought never to be hidden from the light of day. I think you’re underestimating your fellow Americans if you think that greater visibility of each death penalty case would further popularize the death penalty. In particular, cases where there’s substantial reasonable doubt about the condemned’s true guilt for the crime would get a lot more media attention and public scrutiny, which is all to the good, IMHO. Time for this tragedy to be a little less out of sight, out of mind.
minkle
wow – you’ve got a long memory.!