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| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
AND? I don't care who wrote it. |
You should care who wrote it... the person writing it and their credentials gives the level of credibility and knowledge to what they're saying.
| quote: | Yea right. Is that all you'v got? We should end the debate now... |
Well, we should. Because you obviously didn't read or understand the difference between specific intent vs. general intent, which is the basis for the legality of waterboarding. Doesn't matter what your personal opinion is... the law is very clear:
With a general intent crime, "To find guilt, all the jury (the “neutral trier of fact”) has to determine is (a) that you knew what you were doing (i.e., you intended to shoot the gun or rob the bank — you didn’t do it by mistake), and (b) the result was the logical outcome that anyone who performed such an act should have expected."
| quote: | Torture, however, is not a general-intent crime. It calls for proof of specific intent. As I recently recounted, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals explained the difference in its Pierre case last year: to establish torture, it must be proved that the accused torturer had “the motive or purpose” to commit torture. Sharpening the distinction, the judges used an example from a prior torture case — an example that thoroughly refutes Holder’s attempt to downgrade torture to a general-intent offense: “The mere fact that the Haitian authorities have knowledge that severe pain and suffering may result by placing detainees in these conditions does not support a finding that the Haitian authorities intend to inflict severe pain and suffering. The difference goes to the heart of the distinction between general and specific intent.”
To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer — if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture. One might have expected Holder to know that. |
And that's the point... you're going based on what you think the logical result of the action of waterboarding is, not the legal definitions. The objective/intent was to obtain information, NOT to inflict lasting physical or mental harm. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's the law. Like the other poster said, Mankow was back in his chair 10 minutes later doing his program. Are you telling me he has endured psychological damage?
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i dont want my gov torturing people- forget laws & legal boundaries, what happened to the respect & morals of being a fucking fellow human being? 
