What do you think the cause was for 9/11?
I think the problem is the ideology (not the religion) they ascribe to and its not limited to just OBL and his following, much less only present in two countries. We are simply chasing our tail by going after the symptoms and worrying too much about Political Correctness to crush the actual disease.
Do you honestly believe that simply crushing OBL and his followers in those two countries would have been the end of our problems with those who seek to carry out terrorist attacks on our country? If not... then what's the end game... Are you just looking to play defense so that when we engage the enemy we have world opinion on our side?
What else, besides torture, would qualify as descending to the level of the enemy? I mean, how do you decide which actions we take as being on their level? They torture, therefore if we torture we've lowered ourselves to their level or what?
How can "no one know" the information that you later claim is 'known'?
It sounds like your suggesting that the absence of evidence to support your conclusion is somehow proof that your conclusion is correct or that the proof needed to support your conclusion is known, it just has not been made public.
I want names... Are you including me in the "Pro-Torture" category? As I have said repeatedly, I am against torture but I disagree that waterboarding (as we carried it out) qualified as torture.
In the accepted Geneva Convention definition (concept) of torture, the question of intent plays a large role in deciding what is and is not torture. Does intent matter to you in determining what is torture?
That is patently false, as Big Rob has pointed out repeatedly. According to the Geneva Convention, the only existing category they would have fit into was "Unlawful Combatant", whereupon they were due NO rights and could have been executed without so much as a trial.
You said you would have gone to war... Even if we had not "sanctioned torture", are you suggesting that incidents like Abu-Ghraib would not have taken place? If you admit such incidents would happen anyway, how can you support going to war if it will only result in torture?
