Sadistic, Self-Righteous Pricks
30 April 2009 by Bob
End of the semester crunch-time, and it always sucks: students who need stuff, who just woke-up to the fact that they’re failing, who still ask for makeups left and right, final projects, blah-blah-blah. It always starts around the beginning of April, and doesn’t let-up till around the end of May. UGH.
But I couldn’t help but notice this little ditty:
Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.
The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.
Praise Jesus!
30 April 2009, on 10:07 pm
Of course – the holy babble is full of violence and cruelty. Why shouldn’t these nice church going sadists back torture. Besides, the folks being tortured aren’t christians and believe in a different imaginary friend in the sky and that makes them even more expendable.
30 April 2009, on 10:10 pm
Christians thrive on torture, sadism, violence, war, etc. Their whole belief system is based on it.
30 April 2009, on 10:12 pm
No real surprise to me.
All Abrahamic religions are…IMHO…pure, unadulterated forms of Sado/Masochism.
30 April 2009, on 10:55 pm
Best of luck, Bob. I’m right there with you.
1 May 2009, on 8:00 am
Getting back to their medieval roots, how charming…
1 May 2009, on 9:59 am
As an interrogation method, the results of torture are questionable and unreliable.
There is no doubt, under a competent torturer, the tortured will ultimately say whatever they believe is necessary to stop the pain, be it truth or not.
This can all lead to what was deemed “faulty intelligence” prior to our invasion of Iraq. George W. Bush stated, “Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.”
But it wasn’t true. It was information from al-Libbi, who had been captured and tortured. He made it up because that was what the torturers wanted to hear, and it made the torture stop.
Some of us are old enough to remember the Korean War. Captured American pilots were forced to sign confessions admitting war-crimes, such as using biological warfare and intentionally bombing residential areas. The shocked look on their faces and their demeanor was clear evidence of the psychological breakdown torture had caused. They weren’t tortured for information, but to force them to confess for propaganda reasons.
There is very little difference between the North Korean Communists torturing and using false confessions for propaganda and George W. Bush condoning torture and using false confessions to convince the American people to support his planned invasion of Iraq.
I don’t think church goers supporting torture as an interrogation method tells us anything about them other than they are uninformed and gullible; and we already knew that!
1 May 2009, on 10:59 am
Does this result really surprise anyone? Of course those assholes like to torture. If they had the political power, does anyone doubt they would throw us all into death camps?
1 May 2009, on 12:22 pm
The other 46% wanted to know, before they answered, if torture was exempt from the “do unto others” plan.
1 May 2009, on 5:42 pm
As hogarm mentioned above, physical torture is a notoriously bad way of extracting information. People will basically tell you stories, make up shit, just to get the pain to stop. Considering that a lot of the people tortured just don’t know anything, the signal to noise ratio is pretty much guarantees lousy intelligence.
The whole “in an emergency” reason for torture just seems like a blatant whitewash. If you don’t have other methods of getting information, via people in place for just that reason, sigintel etc. then torture is a way to do something without doing something.
Very much like praying for people that your church molested.
Obviously you can’t rule out pure sadism as well.
There is NO justification for torture.
The fact that “religious” people are more likely to condone torture just focuses on the cognitive dissonance that god botherers have made the center of their lives.
1 May 2009, on 5:57 pm
Ya know, all I keep thinking is, if these people REALLY believed in the babble… Shouldn’t they almost unanimously agree that torture is wrong?
That whole do unto others thing?
Jesus loves us. Only Ghad can judge? Turn the other cheek? WTF happened to that?
I actually agree that “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a pretty good way to run your life. Where does that break down? How can people live with twisted minds like that? When does it become, we are right fuck the rest of the world?
It just goes to show you, god was created in the image of the sick bastards that worship him, not the other way around.
Sorry for the rant.
1 May 2009, on 9:57 pm
Then the xians have the nerve to suggest that atheists have no moral compass because we don’t believe in god. Can their pea brains shrivel any smaller?
What I find interesting is the fact that the Japanese used water boarding as an “enhanced interrogation technique” too, but they LOST the war. So what does this tell us about the effectiveness of using torture? I hate to think of how many more disgruntled young men they have pushed into the terrorist camps as a result of this course of action. Never will good can come from torture. NEVER!
My husband and I want to see those responsible for setting up that interrogation protocol charged with war crimes. Obama better send a clear message that such behavior will not be tolerated or he’s about as worthless as the Pope.
1 May 2009, on 11:11 pm
^I agree–Obama needs to go beyond saying it’s “wrong” and actually take some action. Sure, the Fox pundits are going to scream bloody murder, but they’ll find any reason to crucify him anyway. Obama needs to take the higher ground and take a stand for what’s right, and salvage our image in the world.
I would imagine that the reason some of these xtians support torture is because they also support the Shrub and feel they need to stand behind him on this hotbutton issue, especially when he stands to be prosecuted for these actions.
Doesn’t matter what ANY of these folks surveyed think–torture is illegal under all circumstances. The Geneva convention makes this explicitly clear. Anyone in the Shrub administration that allowed this to happen should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
2 May 2009, on 5:51 pm
My question (and as I already know the answer I don’t even know why I’m posing it) is do they understand the phrase what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?
If it’s okay for US to torture, is it then okay for THEM to torture? Every single “reason” they give to justify our torturing them is just as justified if they do it to us. So how would they react? Would they find it okay then? Probably not.
Lynda, your example of the Japanese in WWII is apt because not only did they lose, the torturers were also tried and executed. But then I guess it’s a case of when YOU (used as a general term here, I don’t mean you, Lynda) do it it’s okay, but if someone else does it it’s wrong.
2 May 2009, on 9:33 pm
For years the USA has been using torture by way of sending people to countries where torture is routinely used. This also needs to be investigated by Obama’s administration and action taken to end such practices. And in those countries where people are shipped to be interrogated they don’t stop with less painful techniques such as water boarding. The sky’s the limit in places such as Syria.
Read about how the US got others to do their dirty work for them: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/arar_statement.html