re: #771 Obdicut

I have visited Auschwitz. WWII is a passion of mine. I am Jewish. Stop lecturing me.

It was not more effiicent than killing in the fields. Coming across a Jew and shooting them then and there— that was the most efficient want to kill them. Not the camps. The camps were the obscenity. They were not an efficiency.

You keep deflecting. Over and over. You keep demanding I answer random questions that have nothing to do with the very, very simple fact:

Your support for torture has no basis in logic. You have no reason, at any point, to trust that what a terrorist says due to torture is the truth, or what they communicate to someone else due to torture will not involve a trap or a lie. You might torture a terrorist to find out where a bomb was and have your agents sent right to a trap. You might torture a terrorist to stop an attack and have them communicate that they were being tortured to their aides. You might bomb the camps and use up resources that should be used on the Romanian oil fields, so that the Nazis are able to fight on and delay longer and the death tolls rise higher.

You do not consider any part of the narrative except your desired outcome. And you pretend that is a reason.

Saying “But I need to do something” is not a reason. It is a cry of the heart. It does not mean it is wise, reasonable, good, or moral.

Actually, you are the one doing the lecturing.

I am illustrating a point- that controlling the narrative only works for so long. There is always another narrative that can be applied. In denying that, you are the one who presents only the narratives that support your desired outcome.

As I have said all along, I do believe that torture is rarely a good idea. I have also said there are a few instances when torture may be of value. I have given possible scenarios to illustrate that. You reject them wholesale, accusing me of ‘emotionality’. In my business that is real deflection.

The funny thing about torture is that if it never, ever worked, the practice would have been abandoned long ago.

I submit that there have been rare instances it has done as advertised. Human nature is something with which I have a passing familiarity. There are individuals who will cave with threats of torture, mild torture and others who will respond to severe torture. Military organizations and intelligence agencies the world over have studied this phenomena.

The who’s and the whys are not germane to this conversation, however.