re: #356 Salamantis

The reason to not threaten these guys’ children is because it is dumb, and it is dumb because it would not work, and anyone weho knows jack shit about the jihadi mindset would KNOW that it would not work. They would consider their children to be dying martyrs’ deaths, and to thus be assured Paradise, and themselves to be willing to sacrifice their children for Allah, so they would eventually be allowed by Him to join them there.

A jihadi win-win all the way around.

Why do people constantly act as if a terrorist is not capable of loving his own children, and at the same time ready to kill other peoples children? Has history not shown humans to have this capacity time and again? This “don’t use this or that because it is ineffective anyways” argument is false. I am sure they (terrorists) come with varied capacities to love their children. The guy who wears the strap on, is also very different from the leaders and “masterminds” that make the plans and give the orders. I would also argue that the higher ranking they are, the more value this threat has. The same argument against waterboarding being ineffective, as they will say anything to make it stop, also ignores the fact that it is seldom done, and often held in reserve for individuals who are well known jihadis with a very high probability of having intel. People against harsh techniques, always build their arguments around the notion that simply “suspicious looking” people are randomly grabbed, and threatened or waterboarded, for information, and therefore it will be unreliable, and the techniques should be discarded 100% from the play book.

If we captured Osama Bin Laden, today, and needed to find out everything he knew, would you argue that threatening his family should not be used to gain that information? Would you argue that waterboarding would not be effective in gaining that information? The arguments I am hearing suggest neither techniques would be condoned or justified in this scenario. I say that’s BS, and I say you all know it is, even if you refuse out of pride, or whatever, to acknowledge that the right tools are necessary for the right job, and when applied properly will generate the results that saves lives. It is not black and white people. These techniques are only used in circumstances when the target is known to have intel. Not used on the pizza guy who delivered pies to the apartment of a known terror cell. This place sounds like code pink lately. What the hell is happening around here?