FLIPSIDE won the Face Off.

Hadrian vs FLIPSIDE

Colbert
Face Offs: 50
Wins: 27
Losses: 22
Ties: 1
No City, XX
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2
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Neutral
Face Offs: 7
Wins: 2
Losses: 3
Ties: 2
Boston, MA
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5
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CIA torturers need to be prosecuted...for revealing state secrets.


A man tortured at a secret CIA prison can't see his lawyer to complain about being tortured...because the means of torture used on him are a state secret. These torturers need to be prosecuted. By torturing him, the CIA disclosed state secrets to this man. Catch-22 right back at ya, sadistic ****s.


The kind of Catch-22 you mention is actionable, as in the case of Lynne Stewart of the NLG who violated the states secret rule by helping the blind cleric throw his gang signs to Al Qaeda. But it has only a 50% success rate of prosecution as in suppressed evidence cases where federal complicity in criminal loop is part of the discovery process, and where lawyers presenting papers from one section of government violates the secrecy of the other branch of government. In short, Catch-22s are hard to prosecute successfully.


It's hard to do, but still necessary. If revealing state secrets is not prosecuted, the government will be emboldened to do something like blow the cover of an active CIA agent dealing with WMD in Iran and set-back our intelligence gathering abilities 10 years. Our intelligence services may then have to mistakenly say that Iran stopped its WMD programs in 2003! That would really embarrass the US -- maybe even more so than a prosecution of the CIA for revealing state-secrets to its victims of torture.


Moot point. Our intelligence gathering abilities are already set back ten years. The wave of the future is open source intelligence such as at Cryptome, and the now butthurt Wikileaks. Ideally, in the near present, everyone will have the camera type cellphones and everybody will be constantly narking on everyone else at the same time and posting it to YouTube. In such a world, leaked secret information will be as banal as independently produced albums. Only the concerned or demented parties or voyeurs will be interested in the particular information leaked. Therefore I am right, and you are wrong.


Oh, ya...I forgot. They did issue the camera type cellphones to CIA tortured prisoners! Actually, what they did was carefully videotape the interrogations and then, just as carefully, destroyed the videos. Maybe they were embarrassed by the cheerful chats on camera type cellphones these tortured prisoners were seen to be enjoying!

And yes, torture will be seen as banal I suppose. Even so, the rule of law must prevail. Revealing state secrets to sworn enemies of the US is a serious crime and needs to be punished. Therefore I am right, and I am right.


By your reasoning, YOU have violated state secrets by pointing out the vulnerability of state secrets. Thus I can only presume that this debate is a honeypot designed to trick me into hearing these state secrets. I don't want to win this debate just to find myself wearing goggles and headphones in Gitmo. Even worse, since America is a government of the people, and I am a person, my disclosure of my own fear is a violation of a state secret.

Clearly your premise decomposes into an infinite regress of violations. In such an environment, no law can be taken seriously. You sir are some kind of anarchist! And I don't mean that as a compliment!

And when you said "I am right and I am right" you clearly exposed your multiple identity. I am only required to debate one person per debate. Therefore I call fowl!

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Stewart

Thus begins the long, slow descent into madness.

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Brownback-button

Madness? Makes perfect sense to me.

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Colbert

I think torturing men kidnapped for US reward money by bandits in Pakistan and judged to be terrorists because they wear a Casio watch (used for bomb-making....but also the most common watch in Asia!) began our descent into madness.

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