Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Bin Laden is Dead

Hitler had his own vague, conflicting religious references/ rationalizations. He didn't use mainstream religion as his main propaganda tool like OBL. With or without the existence of religion, Hitler would have been the same, evil murdering bastard.

Good stuff Phil.

I think Hitler's spirituality was the will to power in the struggle for supremacy among racial groups. His prophets were Darwin and Herbert Spencer, Heidegger, Baeumier. After all, as Hitler remarked, Alles Leben ist Kampf.

Western civilization's spiritual - religious framework is Judeo-Christian ethical monotheism. Hitler's 'spirituality' is not congruent with that higher theme. In fact, Hitler was the antithesis of ethical monotheism, complaining that Judaism and Christianity and their ethical schema weakened the Superior Aryan Geist.

It would be very unfair to hold Hitler up as an example of religion gone mad. On the other hand, even a cursory review of Mohammad's life and conduct and the values which are normative in Islamic cultures might lead to different conclusion.

You keep avoiding the point. I didn't answer your question because it is not based in THE REAL WORLD, which is what we're (trying) to talk about here.

You also keep ignoring the points the against using torture. "Enduring the unendurable..." To repeat, if the torturer doesn't know the answer, then how can that person tell the difference between the truth and the "bullsh!t" !?

Please see this outline from the US Army Training Manual.

The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor. condoned by the US Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. However, the use of force is not to be confused with psychological ploys, verbal trickery, or other nonviolent and noncoercive ruses used by the interrogator in questioning hesitant or uncooperative sources.
Source

The above which I grabbed from here also points out a CIA operative that says torture is unreliable, brings up the point that basic human memory can be flawed and unreliable (you know, why courts tend to require cold hard proof, not just eye-witness testimony, because people just remember things wrong sometimes) and various scientific proof that human memory gets worse when deprived of sleep or put under pressure...

But I suppose you know more than the people who wrote the US Army Training Manual? CIA operatives? Dozens of scholarly articles on human memory, etc..

Please note I found this article just now, but it does include your ticking-time bomb scenario and considers it the same as I did previously.

It's clear at this point you are unable to have a reality based discussion, so I will cease responding to you now. Feel free to make another glib comment on how I "cannot deal in an honest way" as your only retort while you continue to ignore all the evidence against your point. I am done here.

Well said, Craig. Thanks for the info.

Interesting that a true military manuals would be open for public view by a plain citizen.

As far as military secrets, how much information in the manual is that sensitive? I'm assuming they have to give a lot of them out. It would be a lot to expect it to never see the light of day. And even for the more sensitive information, it's not like WikiLeaks never happens.

Here's the Official Department of the Army Publications and Forms. And here's all of the army's doctrine and training publications.

Despite what training manuals say, they're very rarely followed (officers go beyond what's appropriate), which is why they aren't that sensitive. They're equivalent to something like Canada's food guide .

Racism has been a tool for a long time but it's not written in any manual.

No one is saying that enhanced interrogation or torture is morally correct. If you a priori assume that neither enhanced interrogation nor torture can obtain reliable information, then there is no need to reach the moral issue. Instead, you can dispose of the issue on purely utilitarian grounds, as you Craig and Stupidity is Not a Handicap have done.

I acknowledge the US military training manuals' statements regarding torture and enhanced interrogation. The manual pertains to military prisoners. Here we are talking about terrorists, or non nation state players such as soldiers in the army of Allah.

As to soldier prisoners, you can't even play loud music or interfere with a prisoner's sleep. I agree with this whole heartedly.

I submit however, that the case is different for terrorists, especially terrorists who hope to use weapons of mass destruction to annihilate the population of an American city or render it uninhabitable. Do you urge the restraints set out in the US military manual against discomforting a prisoner who has such information?

Not to put too fine a point on it, Craig and Stupidity is Not a Handicap, but your arguments lack even the courage to engage the moral issues presented.

I also find your reliance on a US military manual potentially ironic as I suspect you both regard the US military as at least an unsavory if not a criminal organization.

By the way, you don't really think either of you could resist even 60 seconds of torture before giving up your families, do you? So much for torture is ineffective.

I still don't see how this means the information gathered is reliable... especially as unreliable as some families are.