When talking to your wingnut friends about torture, remind them that

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1) No country that has adopted torture has EVER just limited it to "evildoers." Argentina, one of the most advanced and well-educated countries in South America, started torturing when it had a minor domestic terrorism problem in the 1970s. But they didn't stop with suspected terrorists. They extended their reach to friends of suspected terrorists, and then to friends of friends, and then to anyone who objected to their fellow citizens being tortured. In all, 30,000 people, most of them in their teens and twenties, were tortured and killed by the authoritities before the "Dirty War" ended.

In countries that practice torture, it is not uncommon to torture children to make their parents talk. (U.S. forces are alleged to have done this at Abu Ghraib.) Sometimes the sadists take over so completely that they'll torture anyone who comes into police custody, whether they're dangerous or not.

Allowing torture under any circumstances is a slippery slope. First foreign "terrorists," then American opponents of the administration, then anyone who might have some information about American opponents of the administration, then anyone who might have been named at random by a person under torture. If you approve of torture for "terrorists," don't be surprised if the torturers come for you or someone you care about in a few years time.

2) If our military and intelligence services torture prisoners, how can U.S. military personnel expect to be treated humanely? Protesting harsh treatment of Western prisoners while our side is torturing people makes us look like hypocrites.

3) (If the wingnuts are also fundies) that Jesus was tortured by the Romans because they thought that he was trying to overthrow the Roman occupation. In other words, they thought he was a potential terrorist.

4) Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy were not "suspected terrorists." They were proven serial killers, proved to be responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocent people each. Yet our system did not torture them and gave them public trials with the opportunity for legal representation. Why is someone who is only ACCUSED of terrorism less worthy of Constitutional protections than PROVEN serial killers?

[Avalux]

1. But it's NOT torture!

We're not using extreme techniques like the rack or anything like that. What we want to do is simply coercion. (RW kool-aid drinker statement).

[halobeam]

2. And there lies the unreliability of coersed "extracted information"

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. I'm going to tell them that when the democrats are in power......

legal torture could be very useful when it comes with dealing with the wingnuts.
Well, probably not useful but it could be entertaining.

[RufusEarl]

4. I'll start with suspected terrorist,

then we'll hear more and more about local police dept adopting torture as a way to get confessions. This admin have done allot of stupid things, but this one (torture) is without a doubt the dumbest.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. These are good argument/talking points. But the fact that it's evil is, or

should be, sufficient.

The "Golden Rule" should apply: whatever interrogation methods are used should be ones that, if used on our own captured troops, would be deemed acceptable by the advocates of the method.

That's not just because the same techniques WILL be used if we use them (consequences), it just meets one of the criteria ("golden rule") of a moral action.

Many wingnuts can never in their minds conceive of a time when the U.S. will not be the most powerful and feared nation, so the "consequences" arguments will not have resonance with them.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. The purpose is to respond to the wingnuts who

are so deeply into the Bush cult that they think anything is fine as long as their Dear Leader is doing it.

It can be instructive for them to ponder the idea that their support for torture could ultimately result in a friend or relatives or even themselves being tortured.

It can be instructive for those whose lazy excuse is that "terrorists are evil" to remember how we customarily treat demonstrably evil people in our judicial system.

[Canuckistanian]

7. Remind them that income tax was once "temporary" and "limited"

Now it's expanded to a monster (their view). Why wouldn't torture expand beyond it's original purpose?

[kath]

8. Remind them that when the Japanese were found to have used waterboarding

against our POWs, they were prosecuted for warcrimes.

[BeFree]

9. Good talking points

K&R

The person you save from being tortured may be yourself.

[GeorgeGist]

10. Get new friends