2) I don’t know if the Bible speaks directly about torture, but I do know that God isn’t just the loving God that so many on the Left love to embrace. Not only is God a loving God, but the Bible speaks of other aspects of what God is about, that God is a vengeful God. Hebrews 10:30-31 says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”. Most people like to think of God as just being cute; but that’s not true. On the day of judgment, the majority of people will find out just how fearful God is.

3) I dont think that most on the Left hate their country, so much as they take for granted the freedoms they are allowed here in this country.

I wanted to highlight a couple of comments from yesterday's mostly reasoned thread on defining "torture," because taken together I think they best capture what I've been getting it. First, here's Jeff Medcalf, who addresses the…

The posts above have a smattering of responses from the “leftists” and they are true to form: including snickering elitism and a “factual report” about CIA atrocities from an anonymous source.

Hopefully, other leftists will offer reasoned responses to the questions.

I suggest you read the comments starting with the answer to question #3. That particular question is so utterly insane that the answer to it pretty much tells you pretty everything you need to know about the commenter. Once you know whether the commenter is a loon, then you can read their answers to questions #1 and #2 in context.

It’s a wonderful device and I strongly encourage it in future polls! Thanks LaShawn!

It just struck me, upon reading LaShawn’s definition of not-really-torture : “Withholding food, depriving prisoners of sleep, letting them thirst a little bit, irritating them with foul odors and extremely loud sounds, offending their sensibilities, religious or otherwise, that kind of thing” are (perhaps not the food and drink so much) all things that most parents experience on a regular basis.

They are awash in a sea of valueless, intellectual perdition and they are trying to take the rest of us with them. They will not succeed.

3. Because they can. And, they’re spoiled brats who don’t realize how they got the rights they have.

No thats not torture. Sounds almost exactly like the conditions at my dorm last year.
-no sleep
-bad smells
-offensive lectures
-LOUD roommate
-Lack of edible food/Raman for weeks on end.

*shrugs*

“”Remarkably, of the nation’s major newspapers, only the Wall Street Journal has editorialized in support of torture as a useful tool of American intelligence policy. Regrettably, that position does a huge disservice to the nation and its soldiers. There are really only three issues in this debate, and the Journal carefully turned a blind eye to all three: (1) is torture reliable, (2) is it consistent with America’s values and Constitution, and (3) does it best serve our national interests?

No one has yet offered any validated evidence that torture produces reliable intelligence. While torture apologists frequently make the claim that torture saves lives, that assertion is directly contradicted by many Army, FBI, and CIA professionals who have actually interrogated al Qaeda captives. Exhibit A is the torture-extracted confession of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al Qaeda captive who told the CIA in 2001, having been “rendered” to the tender mercies of Egypt, that Saddam Hussein had trained al Qaeda to use WMD. It appears that this confession was the only information upon which, in late 2002, the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state repeatedly claimed that “credible evidence” supported that claim, even though a now-declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from February 2002 questioned the reliability of the confession because it was likely obtained under torture. In January 2004, al-Libi recanted his “confession,” and a month later, the CIA recalled all intelligence reports based on his statements.

Exhibit B is the case of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi deemed a “high-value” target by the CIA. After being beaten to an extent that he had several broken ribs, he was subjected to a form of crucifixion known as “Palestinian hanging. Forty-five minutes later, he was dead, never having revealed whatever vital, ticking-bomb information his American interrogator was seeking.”

2) Nothing in the Bible really speaks to torture, pro or con, directly. But I think it is clear that the ends do not justify the means. I think that if you commit sinful acts to get to your goals, they are sinful, period.

3) I do think that some people here in the US do have a strange hatred for the country. The kind of people that pay money to wear a Che shirt and attend rallies to rant against Israel and the US, without seeing a single touch of irony. I think part of it is self loathing… they see the flaws in our culture and system, but if they denounce it hard enough, with enough passion, it excuses them from giving up the benefits they have derived from being here. Personally, I’ll listen to a legitimately underprivledged person, politely and with little comment (I cannot avoid a little Socratic method, it is my nature), but I have much less tolerance for folks firmly in the middle and upper classes. Poseurs.