re: #497 opnion

Look if you just discount the source because it is inconvenient to your arguement, this goes nowhwere. This cretin was a planner of 9/11 & the CIA got him to talk.
I do admire your ideals, but this not an academic exercise.
I can’t help noticing that since we appear to now be safe, people are only now getting fussy about how we were kept safe.

Oh, I was fussy about it back then, too.

I think it’s always wise to weight the source and its motivations when considering evidence. I’m not saying that people never break under torture and spill the secrets. Different people have different levels of pain tolerance, conditioning, belief in their cause, etc. I do think that the chance of getting BAD information increases.

We don’t use torture or any other method of coercion in our legal system because we accept as a society that people will often just tell someone what they want to know to get away from something that’s painful or frightening.

I don’t like the idea of things like this slipping in to the CIA’s playbook. Part of my argument is moral - I definitely feel that this is wrong and unAmerican. But there’s also a realization that power once given can’t easily be taken back, and sooner or later someone’s going to push the envelope with a US citizen.

The Army, the Police, the CIA and FBI and all those other groups are made up of a vast majority of good, decent people who want to do a good job doing a lot of things and dealing with a lot of people that the rest of us want to stay as far away from as possible. But there are people in those organizations who are not good people and who are power-hungry and like to have and wield authority over others. A bully with a badge is bad enough. A bully with a badge and any idea that they can say things about your kid or do things to your kid should scare the hell out of anyone sane.