Simulacrum

OK — so corporations are never culpable for anything?

Perhaps we could blame them for, in many cases, manipulating the legislators themselves to provide these loopholes.

Why should it be done to you? What does mutilating a person after the fact accomplish?

Wow.

Obama didn't turn down the prize. I guess your post makes marginal sense if you mean that Obama is a dipshit for accepting the award. But still pretty silly.

Yeah, no. I've cited plenty of evidence, and you've acknowledged it in the rest of your response. From the rest of your first paragraph, it's pretty clear that what you mean is that you have no factual evidence of torture being useful. Feel free, of course, to critique that evidence, but don't pretend that we're on equal footing in that regard. I'm not sure what the actions of other terrorists have to do with whether our actions might be terroristic in nature. Suppose that the United States engaged in actions that were unambiguously acts of terror — if we, say, sent a CIA team to blow up a hotel in Cairo. Would this not be a contribution to the methodology — terror — which we are supposed to be trying to stamp out? The actions of our enemies are simply irrelevant. And how do you propose to alter other cultures' perceptions of America without altering our own behavior? A fine line indeed. Are you familiar with the placebo effect? In medical experiments, it is always necessary to treat the placebo effect as zero. If a subject's condition improves under treatment, but not as much as under the placebo, this indicates that the treatment itself is hurting the patient. I think that a similar principle applies to any hypothetical study of torture. Suppose that we can get accurate information 10% of the time with standard interrogation techniques, but only 3% of the time with torture. If torture is used, those 3% of cases do not show that torture worked. They simply show that the detrimental effects of torture were insufficient in those cases to offset the ordinary success rate of interrogation. Thus, it is not enough to show that torture "works" sometimes for it to actually be deemed useful. There needs to be a category of situations where we can expect a greater likelihood of success for torture than for other techniques to even begin justifying its use. You know what "empirical" means? You absolutely cannot invalidate the observation that torture is less effective than conventional interrogation by inventing hypotheses about why it shouldn't be more effective. We live in a world where conventional interrogation works better than torture; it's just unfortunate for your argument, I guess, that the humanist position is also the more strategic one. Although Lynx has covered this quite well, there really should be no ethical part in a thread on the utility of torture.

http://disney-clipart.com/incredibles/jpg/syndrome-incredibles.jpg

Ermm, can Java run on phones? Because Chatnut would already work in that situation, n'est-ce pas?

Of course. You can use war to achieve peace. But Rush seems to be saying that war and peace can coexist, and that's textbook Newspeak.

The beard is a lie...

Point. But actually coding the thing still stands to be a huge pain in the ass.

I can't imagine a mobile phone having the horsepower to display the game (not to mention the coding required to port the game's display engine). A chat client, on the other hand, sounds like it could be reasonably ported from Chatnut.

First rule of search trends is that political developments mean jack shit next to pop culture. This rule also applies to CNN and Fox.

Yeah. Uhh. That already happened. And why are you whining about it?

Lynx has covered most everything else, but I did want to call out Dr. Brain's "11-days" sleight of hand a bit more clearly: Obama was nominated, along with 203 other people, only eleven days after his inauguration. However, the final decision to award him the prize was made several months later. Claims that Obama was or should have been awarded only on the basis of those eleven days are thus remarkably dishonest, or, at best, ignorant.

Note: I did not originally claim that torture is useless; only that it is an abhorrent violation of human rights. However, this is where the discussion has gone: That is a matter of opinion. Personally I feel that there are times and places where torture can be useful. We can elaborate later in another topic if you want me to get into those details. Same thing with indefinite detention. Leaving aside my ethical objections to torture for a moment, I challenge the idea that torture can be "useful" on three grounds: Strategic grounds: The decision to use torture affects the policies of ourselves, our allies, and our enemies, and certainly not in ways that further our goals. As the United States pursues and ideological war on terror, it would be inevitably self-defeating to implement policies of terror in our own service. Scientific grounds: Torture does not create an incentive to tell the truth, but an incentive to tell any story that will make the torture stop. Additionally, the psychological effects of torture can inhibit the memories of valuable sources, and sometimes kill them. Empirical grounds: The FBI's own experts are critical of both torture's theoretical usefulness and its record in the present campaign. If there is some dystopia where torture is necessary, or even useful, we are not yet living in it. With those objections in mind, what are these situations where torture can be useful, and where do they actually exist?

tl;dr: War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

How about strategy for using the brick?

... Except that, y'know, torture and indefinite detention are abhorrent practices which we should strive to eliminate. I mean, seriously? "Everybody else does it"? Anyway, you've managed to kick this out at least two degrees (Glenn Beck → Khalid Sheik Mohammed → Guantánamo) from the topic. Howzabout more Glenn Beck?

Presumably, to uphold our reputation for rule of law. Think about all the bad press we get (especially internationally, with allies) over things like Guantánamo. I wouldn't assume that the Attorney General is flagrantly wrong in being confident in a conviction, so, worthwhile or not, I think that's what we're spending the money on. Personally, I think it's worthwhile, both for our image and for the human rights principle at stake.