yes i dont think it's accurate. i've heard stories of peoples being interrigated for 20 hours straight no sleep and confessing to things that never happened just so they could go to sleep. stein. . .
The original secenario I created is not Iraq, not Guantanamo. It is a specific person with specific knowledge and lives in the balance. It's hard to think about and can't be rejected with storys of innocent people confessing to crimes they did not do. That is not the scenirio.
Let's make it personal. 3 guys come and snatch your momma. You grab one but the other 2 get away with mom. You want to know where are they going. Torture?
I don't know how often this really happens. Sounds like movie material. If you actaully caught them and had one of the guys it wouldn't be that hard to put the rest together. (I'm talking bomb not mamma). In either case their would be a fresh trail of eveidence to follow. Plus, if the CIA/FBI is watching someone they have a decent idea on where to look. They are eaither hold up in a cave where they can't do anything, or ontheir way to a known location where they can be spotted en route. This is getting to complex, and in reality it is to complex to compare to the yo mamma story.
The point of the simplistic example is to find a point where we would accept it and then work backward to the point where we wouldn't.
Take Bam's (was that writen by Gonzalez?) russian roulette torture. Where would you be willing to use it? In one of these far fetched scenerios? Yes? Well what about the next scenerio down?
While these scenerios are simplified, having a prisioner in Iraq who knows where explosives and bombers are is very real. But I don't want to talk about that because it is all wrapped up in partison politics, that cloud the moral delemia.
America is starting to discuss torture. I think the discussion is a good thing.
Here is the torture conundrum. Say we find out a nuclear device has been smuggled into the States and is going to be detonated soon. We have captured someone who knows where and when.
What level of interigation should be allowed?
This conundrum confronts our troops daily. You capture someone. He/she may know where/when the next IED is going to be placed that may kill you or your buddy. Or they may know where the explosives are hid, or where the bomber is hid. What should they do?
I apoligise in advance to those who do not like seeing these questions played out here. I know for many of you politicstrut is torture.
Peace Dan
I say torture them. I have personally knew soldiers, with whom I served, that either lost a body part or their life because of an IED or mortar.
The time bomb ready to go off, we must torture argument is an old one, but the reality is that the U.S. is torturing prisoners right now who are NOT in this situation and sending others to third countries in the Middle East so that they CAN be tortured even more than the U.S. Some of this torture and abuse is done on purpose by the likes of the CIA and third countries that the CIA sends suspects to, other times it's done on the battlefield by soldiers who are probably caught up in the situation. Basically, my opinion is once you OK torture, people start using it in any and every situation, basically the ends justify the means and anything goes.
Donald Rumsfeld okayd a series of torture techniques to be used on prisoners after 9/11. The main criteria was that as long as it didn't cause permanent damage than the U.S. could do it. Likewise the CIA was given permission to torture as well. According to Human Rights Watch, these are the following tactics that the CIA has been ok'd to use:
1) Forced nudity and sexual situations intended to violate Muslim morals 2) Use of dogs to threaten prisoners 3) Exposures to extremes of hot and cold 4) Sleep deprivation for days 5) Stress positions 6) Water boarding - tying a prisoner to a board and dunking them in water to make them feel like they're going to drown or putting a wet cloth over a persons head tomake them feel like they'll suffocate.
All of these techniques have been used at Guantanomo according to ex-guards in a New York Times report from 10/17/04.
There was a NY Times report from 5/1/05 that said there was evidence that the U.S. was sending terror suspects to Uzbekistan to be interrogated. The country is known for torturing prisoners.
According to the Washington Post 3/17/05 the U.S. sends prisoners to their home countries with the promise that they won't be tortured but a current CIA officer said that was a joke. A U.S. government official was quoted as saying, "It's beyond that. It's widely understood that interrogation practices that would be illegal in the U.S. are being used." in third countries were terror suspects are sent.
An example of this type of routine was reported in the 2/13/05 New York Times where a an Australian born Egyptian Mamdouh Habib was arrested in Pakistan because he was a militant Muslim and a suspected terorist. While in Pakistan he was tortured and knocked unconcious by Pakistanis while a woman he believed was American interrogated him. He then claims he was sent to Egypt where he was tortured again. Eventually he ended up in Guantanamo. While there an American woman interrogator stuck her hand down her pants and flicked blood on his face. When they couldn't find any evidence against him he was released.
An example of a battlefield incident was in the Afghan village of Miam Do when U.S. soldiers put the entire village under arrest for 4 days and an officer beat and chocked residents while interrogating them looking for militants.
A U.S. military review of treatment of prisoners found that many of the abuses found in Abu Ghraib were also happening in military prisons in Afghanistan.
Alberto Gonzels, who is now the Attorney General, and may be nominated to the Supreme Court, was one of the White House lawyers who tried to argue that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to terror suspects. He says that the Geneva Convention only applies to nation states and soldiers that work for them. Terrorists obviously don't work for a country and even though Afghanistan was a state, it was a "quasi political body" in his terms and doesn't count as a normal governent, therefore Taliban soldiers are not protected by the Geneva Conventions either. Basically, if we don't think the government or group is legitimate in our eyes then we don't have to use the Conventions. He wrote a memo to Bush arguing these points on 1/25/02.
Gonzales also wrote advised the White House that the CIA and other nonmilitary personnel do not have to follow a Bush pledge that use humane treatment towards prisoners and that the Congressional ban on cruel and unusual treatment does not apply to foreigners held overseas.
Its weird. I pretty much know its going on, and I have known for a while even before any of the scandals. Its just common sense suspicion I suppose. But given the post 9/11 attitude on muslims, I didnt expect good things.
So, Im aware of it, I dont approve, but what else can you do? Obviously those holding american troops could give a fuck about a geneva convention.
I just think its something that should never be sanctioned, but you know its always going to happen anyway. Just one of the brutal and terrible side effects of war.
War sucks. Fuck war and all the human misery it begets.
Comments
The point of the simplistic example is to find a point where we would accept it and then work backward to the point where we wouldn't.
Take Bam's (was that writen by Gonzalez?) russian roulette torture. Where would you be willing to use it? In one of these far fetched scenerios? Yes? Well what about the next scenerio down?
While these scenerios are simplified, having a prisioner in Iraq who knows where explosives and bombers are is very real. But I don't want to talk about that because it is all wrapped up in partison politics, that cloud the moral delemia.
Donald Rumsfeld okayd a series of torture techniques to be used on prisoners after 9/11. The main criteria was that as long as it didn't cause permanent damage than the U.S. could do it. Likewise the CIA was given permission to torture as well. According to Human Rights Watch, these are the following tactics that the CIA has been ok'd to use:
1) Forced nudity and sexual situations intended to violate Muslim morals
2) Use of dogs to threaten prisoners
3) Exposures to extremes of hot and cold
4) Sleep deprivation for days
5) Stress positions
6) Water boarding - tying a prisoner to a board and dunking them in water to make them feel like they're going to drown or putting a wet cloth over a persons head tomake them feel like they'll suffocate.
All of these techniques have been used at Guantanomo according to ex-guards in a New York Times report from 10/17/04.
There was a NY Times report from 5/1/05 that said there was evidence that the U.S. was sending terror suspects to Uzbekistan to be interrogated. The country is known for torturing prisoners.
According to the Washington Post 3/17/05 the U.S. sends prisoners to their home countries with the promise that they won't be tortured but a current CIA officer said that was a joke. A U.S. government official was quoted as saying, "It's beyond that. It's widely understood that interrogation practices that would be illegal in the U.S. are being used." in third countries were terror suspects are sent.
An example of this type of routine was reported in the 2/13/05 New York Times where a an Australian born Egyptian Mamdouh Habib was arrested in Pakistan because he was a militant Muslim and a suspected terorist. While in Pakistan he was tortured and knocked unconcious by Pakistanis while a woman he believed was American interrogated him. He then claims he was sent to Egypt where he was tortured again. Eventually he ended up in Guantanamo. While there an American woman interrogator stuck her hand down her pants and flicked blood on his face. When they couldn't find any evidence against him he was released.
An example of a battlefield incident was in the Afghan village of Miam Do when U.S. soldiers put the entire village under arrest for 4 days and an officer beat and chocked residents while interrogating them looking for militants.
A U.S. military review of treatment of prisoners found that many of the abuses found in Abu Ghraib were also happening in military prisons in Afghanistan.
Alberto Gonzels, who is now the Attorney General, and may be nominated to the Supreme Court, was one of the White House lawyers who tried to argue that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to terror suspects. He says that the Geneva Convention only applies to nation states and soldiers that work for them. Terrorists obviously don't work for a country and even though Afghanistan was a state, it was a "quasi political body" in his terms and doesn't count as a normal governent, therefore Taliban soldiers are not protected by the Geneva Conventions either. Basically, if we don't think the government or group is legitimate in our eyes then we don't have to use the Conventions. He wrote a memo to Bush arguing these points on 1/25/02.
Gonzales also wrote advised the White House that the CIA and other nonmilitary personnel do not have to follow a Bush pledge that use humane treatment towards prisoners and that the Congressional ban on cruel and unusual treatment does not apply to foreigners held overseas.
So, Im aware of it, I dont approve, but what else can you do? Obviously those holding american troops could give a fuck about a geneva convention.
I just think its something that should never be sanctioned, but you know its always going to happen anyway. Just one of the brutal and terrible side effects of war.
War sucks. Fuck war and all the human misery it begets.