Hashishi

And should those responsible be prosecuted? Would you condone the use these techniques yourself?

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Sec

There are no beatings, no physical injury, no permanent damage, no deprivation of food, They aren't made to march for days on end, kept in hot boxes, etc... I can't help but compare today's techniques to the horror stories of past wars and conflicts.

Being a prisoner of war is not meant to be a stay at the Hilton. Based on the story, I dont' see any reason why these techniques shouldn't be used save the water boarding. To have a physician standing by to perform a tracheotomy says that they know this technique can cause very real physical harm and probably shouldn't be used.

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yoman3

While I think torture should be the last form as a way of getting information out of someone, it should be an acceptable way. It's not like we're going to torture petty thieves or even murders or rapists (like, 1 or two people murders or rapists) But for terrorists or people that are just crazy fucked up...then yea torture the shit out of them.

I don't think Obama should have released the ways we torture people though, because now all of the potential terrorists or mass murders know what we can do, and prepare for it.

LowRider

[quote=yoman3;1074895]While I think torture should be the last form as a way of getting information out of someone, it should be an acceptable way. It's not like we're going to torture petty thieves or even murders or rapists (like, 1 or two people murders or rapists) But for terrorists or people that are just crazy fucked up...then yea torture the shit out of them.

I don't think Obama should have released the ways we torture people though, because now all of the potential terrorists or mass murders know what we can do, and prepare for it.[/quote]


Torture has been around for a long time. they use pressure pints and deprive sleep etc..... its nothing new in what we've been doing. its been around since the beginning. hell they could just google torture. I'm sure you/them will come up with all kinds of techniques. we didn't give anything up.

goodgirl

Sec:
"There are no beatings, no physical injury, no permanent damage, no deprivation of food"

I wonder what you define as "permanent" damage. Is physical damage the only damage that matters? Or do you truly not see how tortures of the kind described, in the environment these prisoners were in could cause serious permanent mental damage?


"I can't help but compare today's techniques to the horror stories of past wars and conflicts."

And I can't help but think that those that insist on drawing comparisons to the past are looking for a justification for our present.

"Based on the story, I dont' see any reason why these techniques shouldn't be used save the water boarding."

Care to try it out yourself? How about on a loved one?

yoman:
"It's not like we're going to torture petty thieves or even murders or rapists (like, 1 or two people murders or rapists) But for terrorists or people that are just crazy fucked up...then yea torture the shit out of them."

And you are comfortable with who gets tortured and who doesn't being left up to a group of people working in secret? How exactly is their terrorist status confirmed? Perhaps by torture? Here is hoping that no one ever has a reason to suspect that you may have information worth torturing you for.

"I don't think Obama should have released the ways we torture people though, because now all of the potential terrorists or mass murders know what we can do, and prepare for it."

I believe part of the reason to release that information was to assure that it would no longer be happening. Regardless, we already knew all of this....it is merely confirmation of what we already knew.

My answer to the OP's question....no, I do not condone torture. The fact that our officials condoned these actions while spouting off about our moral superiority to the world is one of our greatest shames as a nation.

Those that allowed and even condoned these actions should absolutely be prosecuted and it is shameful that they won't be. Statements that we shouldn't dwell on the past do not just miss the point they pave the way for such actions to be allowed in the future. I have never heard of a criminal getting off by promising not to do it again so I fail to see why those involved in this should be given a free pass.

Why fear what the terrorists can do to this country when we are determined to allow it to rot from the inside?

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Sec

They are prisoners of WAR. Perhaps you would prefer them to sleep on silk sheets and down pillows, but they have gone to war, not a slumber party. Treating them humanely while obtaining information that could save hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives in the long run (including perhaps POW's held by the other side), is well worth any physical discomfort and mental stress.

They have been given enough to eat, not more than necessary, but they won't starve to death and don't need to feel like they will starve. Hell, that quantity of food given in one day is sometimes more than starving children in 3rd world countries get in a month.

Maybe we should just say "pretty please, do tell". That'll do it. They will spill their guts to us if we just ask nicely.

PsYcHoLoGiCaL

You know, the legal definition of the word "terrorism" might surprise you.

Have you ever heard of narcoterrorism? This whole labeling and having a different set of rules for "terrorists" is a very slippery slope. The government is not your friend and you should be careful before you empower them. "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” -- Thomas Pain.

After 911, terrorists in the eyes of the people anyways, were rag heads from the ME that "hated our freedom". A few years after 911 "narcoterrorism" language was added to the Patriot Act II. In a few more years there will be another disaster, which will be taken advantage of to expand the definition even further. This will continue until mostly all crimes are considered "terrorism", because after all a thief who robs some woman on the street is in fact terrifying. Is it not?

All I'm saying is be careful what you wish for and remember the number one rule of government. “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.” -- Rahm Israel Emanuel (White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama. )

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Sykes

I see no reason for not torturing terrorists. Torturing 1 bad life can save many innocent people.

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goodgirl

"Torturing 1 bad life can save many innocent people."

Until they decide that it is your life that is the bad one. If we allow them to play fast and loose on the rules about torture what is to stop them from redefining terrorist as well?

Hashishi

There's a few different levels Western intelligence agencies have participitated in since the start of the war. Above all has been the extraordinary rendition flights that have been organised to places like Syria and Romania, where detainees have been flown and left in the hands of foreign interrogators in the full knowledge they'd be tortured (in the conventional sense of the term; nail pulliing etc.). I'd like to see an immediate investigation into this aspect and the only chance of that ever happening is in the hands of the congress.

Then there's the techniques which were released by Obama in the form of the memos. I hope that a full congressional inquiry into this could cast some light on just WTF was going on in the chain of command when it began instigating the above. Unfortunately, as Seymour M. Hersh pointed out in his series for the New Yorker, their ranks have closed and those who were willing to speak out by themselves have gone.

When it comes to the techniques described in the memo, an interesting fact that most don't realise is that these techniques were developed by military intelligence for training recruits. They were developed to as closely resemble a torture regimen as was possible without actually pulling nails or shocking their men's nuts with electrical currents, so in practice we're talking about torture. The UN Convention Against Torture (ratified by the US) also defines it as anything which causes physical or mental suffering. In theory it's torture, too. The convention makes provisions for situational suffering, too: i.e. torture isn't suffering resulting from the conditions a detainee might find themselves in, it's necessarily where the captors go to extraordinay lengths to inflict suffering on their detainees. So what we're talking about in all of the aforementioned scenarios is a cut and dried case of instituationalised torture.

Finally, there's the efficacy of torture. The National Defense Intelligence College has advised that torture doesn't educe qualitative information in the same way that conventional, face to face questioning with trained interrogators does. Indeed, torture educes false information more often than not.

How are we meant to criticise the human rights records of places like China, Cuba and North Korea when this is going in our back yards? It's funny people have brought up wars past, as the defence of these activities proffered that agents couldn't be held accountable as they were simply following orders is just a modern embodiment of the Nuremburg defence, and it's as invalid now as it was then. Many bring up the 'ticking time bomb' argument: i.e. if a terrorist had planted a nuclear device in a heavily populated, urban area, would you, upon the exhaustion of all other options, resort to torture to find out where it was and how to disable it? Even if I did, I'd expect to be prosecuted under international law for doing so.

Personally, I don't see how people can defend these activities without a trace of shame. The fact that US personnel were thrown to the dogs when it got media exosure (i.e. Lynndie England) should send a chill down your spine and at the very least give one pause for thought. Beyond that, military intelligence collaborated with some of the most dspicable regimes in existence. It stinks, and the only thing worse than what's occurred is the continuing, bland acquescense of the people in whose name it was done.

Major General Antonia M. Taguba said it best:

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service (...) the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”