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posted to rec.boats.cruising
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Oct 2006
Posts: 878
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Yeah, I know "plonk"
Dave wrote:
On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:07:06 -0700, Stephen Trapani
said:
wrote:
Stephen Trapani wrote:
I'm sure you would agree that *if* you obtain information that prevents
slaughter of innocents by dunking someone in water a few times, you have
not done something wrong, you have done something good.
No, actually I woould not agree that torture is "good" under any
realistic circumstances.
You can construct all sorts of theoretical justifications; but the
facts are pretty clear... torture does not yield useful or reliable
intel. OTOH it's great if you want to convert a few heretics before
you burn them; but fortunately most of the civilizedworld has out
grown that.
.... I am not arguing that all torture is okay, I'm arguing
that there is such a thing as torture that is okay.
And that's what makes you sick in the head.... or at least not
civilized enough to be making serious decisions that affect the rest
of our society.
Well, by all civilized standards, allowing the slaughter of innocents to
protect the rights of a killer is sick in the head, isn't it? Clearly
you have taken your rationalizing on the issue so far that it makes no
sense anymore. Common with herd mentality issues like this.
The problem with Doug's argument is that it relies upon labeling as a
substitute for thought. Rather than dealing with the specific question you
pose, he labels your proposal "torture," and deems that sufficient to
foreclose further discussion of the policy question.
The technique is very much of a piece with Neal's game of labeling specific
actions "socialism" or "fascism," deeming the label an adequate substitute
for consideration of pluses and minuses of particular actions.
I will credit Doug with possibly adding a substantive claim that
waterboarding doesn't work. I say "possibly" because again rather than
making that specific claim he invokes the T word to claim that "torture"
doesn't work, attempting to sweep the specific action into a much wider net
full of red herrings.
Torture works wonders! Don't you all watch "24"? Sheesh
Gordon
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