[jedhead]

I guess the President need to order the Joint Chiefs to arrest and prosecute the staff over at the Navy SERE school for water boarding our pilots and crew. I had a few friends and family who were water boarded by SERE school as part of their training.

Bob

[Damian]

Originally Posted by Chuck

I say what goes around comes around.

That's what I say, but that won't happen.

[SeanPlunk]

Originally Posted by jedhead

I guess the President need to order the Joint Chiefs to arrest and prosecute the staff over at the Navy SERE school for water boarding our pilots and crew. I had a few friends and family who were water boarded by SERE school as part of their training.

Bob

There is a big difference between submitting to doing it as a part of training, and being subjected to it as a prisoner

[SeanPlunk]

Originally Posted by Chuck

What about the people who where burned alive on 9/11 I say what goes around comes around.

That a bumper sticker slogan, not a logical thought.

We have laws in this country, it's not an eye for an eye. If you want it that way, you should go live in one of the muslim countries like Iran that practices Sharia law.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by SeanPlunk

That's not an argument. We are part of a civilized society and as such we have rules for things like interrogations and torture.

Civilized society? Compared to some in the past I suppose. We're ages away from a civilized society.

Who said anything about it being okay to kill by the way

We justify killing all the time, including innocent women and children as an "unfortunate consequences" of war. It's ok I guess because we try hard not to sometimes. Mind you, if you have a drink and kill someone in an accident you may got to prison for manslaughter. If you explicitly order Predator drone attacks that kill people who have nothing to do with anything, but you are part of a government, hell, you can be a Nobel Peace Prize winner and kill. That's the "civilized" world we live in. Water boarding is a fairly trivial tangential issue compared to our willingness to use outright death and destruction, mangled and charred corpses, and ruined lives as a policy tool. Which we're doing in Libya right now, as we quite literally fly cover for elements of the same organization that we just killed the head of.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by SeanPlunk

. . .We have laws in this country, it's not an eye for an eye. . .

You mean like the death penalty for murder cases? You might want to check some of your premises about law. In our entire history of judeo-christian, Roman, and Anglo-Saxxon Common Law, it is all about balance and reciprocity between parties. Traditionally when someone stole, they had to return property or otherwise make restitution, if they killed, they might get killed back, etc. The rest is a matter of interpretation of the facts in the application of law in the service justice.

[SeanPlunk]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

You mean like the death penalty for murder cases? You might want to check some of your premises about law. In our entire history of judeo-christian, Roman, and Anglo-Saxxon Common Law, it is all about balance and reciprocity between parties. Traditionally when someone stole, they had to return property or otherwise make restitution, if they killed, they might get killed back, etc. The rest is a matter of interpretation of the facts in the application of law in the service justice.

We do have the death penalty, but not every killer gets it. Each case is tried under our legal system and punishment is doled out through due process. Is it a perfect system? No. Does it have limitations? Of Course. To compare it to Sharia law or the idea of eye for an eye is just silly though and you know it

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by SeanPlunk

We do have the death penalty, but not every killer gets it. Each case is tried under our legal system and punishment is doled out through due process. Is it a perfect system? No. Does it have limitations? Of Course. To compare it to Sharia law or the idea of eye for an eye is just silly though and you know it

This time, you're just plain wrong about legal history. I'm not comparing it Sharia law, but I don't think you know the biblical legal context, just the common misunderstanding (deliberate misrepresentation?) of "an eye for an eye". It was about balanced reciprocity, in other words, not "your dog crapped on my lawn, so I kill you", but "you killed, so you can be killed" "you stole property, so you have property taken from you." Our own legal system has this built into it and it evolved over the ages, but that was the basis from the Hebrew Bible, on into Roman law up threw English Common Law. The very notion of equal justice under the law has roots back into the Torah of "an eye in place of an eye." It was NOT some willy nilly open ended invitation to whatever your revenge, but EXACTLY the opposite, a limitation on what constitutes just compensation. Don't feel bad, this is just one of many things most people think they know, but actually have backwards.

The meaning of the principle, an eye for an eye is that a person who has injured another person returns the offending action to the originator in compensation. The exact Latin (lex talionis) to English translation of this phrase is actually "The law of retaliation." At the root of this principle is that one of the purposes of the law is to provide equitable retribution for an offended party.

The phrase, "an eye for an eye", (ayin tachat ayin, literally 'an eye in place of an eye'), is a quotation from several passages of the Hebrew Bible [1][2][3] in which a person who has injured the eye of another is instructed to pay compensation. It defined and restricted the extent of retribution in the laws of the Torah.

[SeanPlunk]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

This time, you're just plain wrong about legal history. I'm not comparing it Sharia law, but I don't think you know the biblical legal context, just the common misunderstanding (deliberate misrepresentation?) of "an eye for an eye". It was about balanced reciprocity, in other words, not "your dog crapped on my lawn, so I kill you", but "you killed, so you can be killed" "you stole property, so you have property taken from you." Our own legal system has this built into it and it evolved over the ages, but that was the basis from the Hebrew Bible, on into Roman law up threw English Common Law. The very notion of equal justice under the law has roots back into the Torah of "an eye in place of an eye." It was NOT some willy nilly open ended invitation to whatever your revenge, but EXACTLY the opposite, a limitation on what constitutes just compensation. Don't feel bad, this is just one of many things most people think they know, but actually have backwards.

I was talking about the literal context of an eye for an eye, as in the case I linked to, but I do appreciate the history lesson. The history is actually fascinating.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by SeanPlunk

I was talking about the literal context of an eye for an eye, as in the case I linked to, but I do appreciate the history lesson. The history is actually fascinating.

Fair enough.