Quote Originally Posted by goesh View Post
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offen...e/robbery.html

2004:
Murders 16,137
Rape 94,635
Robbery 401,326
Aggravated
Assault 854,137

From another website:

2002:
2.6 million reports of child abuse involving 4.5 million children
896,000 children identified as being abused/neglected
1400 dead from abuse/neglect (about 4 a day killed)

Defenders can't be held to standards much higher from the collective from whence they originate. The recent troop survey pretty much confirms this and there is a fairly large swatch of mainstream America that really doesn't care what happens to those forces that seek our demise.
Those numbers are why many people in other countries say they don't necessarily think the United States has all the answers on how to conduct a civil society. I attended a seminar last summer in which a European journalist said it would be absurd for the U.S. government to invest a single dollar in public diplomacy while there is still an ongoing national debate on whether or not torture is in any way permissible.

An important aspect overlooked in this debate is whether or not it results in accurate information. Most of the discussion seems to be driven by the odd assumption that torture somehow results in better information than other forms of questioning. This doesn't square with the facts. Its use over the centuries was pretty effective in getting Conversos to confress they were really relapsed Jews, and in getting witches to confess to dancing with the Devil. More recently, there were numerous cases from the Third Reich and Stalin era, as well as in Vietnam, in which motivated individuals were able to refrain from giving damaging testimony while undergoing prolonged physical torture.