Torture
LaserWolf
Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
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
Comments
The problem is the innocent people that get caught up in it... and I think it is the innocent people that render this technique un-usable.
It's the same with the death sentence... Should some people be killed... Probably, yes. I know I would want to do it myself should someone ever harm one of my loved ones.
But the fact is, lots of innocent people get convicted, and lots of innocent people get the death sentence... Most always the poor and/or minority who cannot afford a proper or competent defense. This should be enough, in my opinion, to put a hold on this practice.
Peace...
Fnm
http://www.danielfaulkner.com/mythsdir.html
I have absolutely no interest in getting into an internet argument over this. Good try, though.
Good idea, let the facts of the Mumia case speak for themselves.
I'ma let your avatar speak for itself.
Thats a little home footage of what happened when me and my granny started debating the merits of the Mumia case.
Eazy there....I could really care less about Mumia. I just wanted to point out that there is another perspective out there on that case.
I'm surprised mumia is still alive. Man, back in the mid 90s that was the cause that every white guilt ridden hardcore kid was taking up. That avatar made me laugh out loud.
FREE MUMIA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS. UHURU!
Hey man, where'd you get this comic? I really want to read more of this. Who's the artist and writer?
In 1978, Standing Deer, a 65-year-old Oneida/Choctaw,
exposed a government plot to assassinate American Indian
Movement (AIM) leader Leonard Peltier in Marion prison. This
bizarre case has been documented in several books, including "In
the Spirit of Crazy Horse" by Peter Matthiessen. In 1984,
Standing Deer, Leonard Peltier, and Albert Garza fasted for 42
days to draw worldwide attention to the deplorable conditions at
USP Marion, the maximum security federal prison. In retaliation,
the government held these three men in total solitary isolation for
15 months with nothing in their cages except a steel bunk and a
toilet. Standing Deer continues to fight for human dignity despite
failing health and reprisals from his captors.
Peltier and Mumia go hand in hand IMO and he's basically been forgotten about through the years.
On a Native-related note (at least he says he is...) did anyone know Premier did a song on this album, complete with Madness and Pete Rock vocal cuts?
Crazt shit. Dude is kind of silly on the vocals though.
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 would make him[/b] take me to my mom and then I would kill all three of them.
there's a huge drive to stop these bombers BEFORE the next bomb goes off... but cops / soldiers are rarely in the situation you're outlining above.. where its obvious who laid the bomb and you've managed to capture one of that group.
in a situation that clear cut then yes torture could probably be justified as they already know of this persons involvment.
but sadly what typically happens is that innocent people who fit the "profile" of the attackers are dragged in and that's when shit hits the fan.
in the belfast case they were dragged in under the simple assumption that they were irish and they were sleeping in a park and had some money on them.
i think the US is in a similar situation on a much larger scale.
I think it was Paul Krugman who recently pointed out that Geneva Conventions do not only protect prisoners and the enemy. It also protects the soldier, intelligence agent, and our country, from immoral acts that dehumanize us.
I feel very personally that I am responsible for any torture my government does.
I would much rather see this discussion in the op-ed pages than "who called who a nazi".
Dan
verily verily verily
life is but a dream
Robert Pape's recent database studying "suicide terrorism" is interesting. And significant to this discussion in some ways.
"Compared with my present imprisonment the future holds no interest for me."
I am always confused by the US denouncing terrorism and torture while practicing "counter" terrorism foreign policy that is, at times, uglier that terrorism...
(File Under: Your New Attorney General Approved The Torture)
Thus, a vague threat that someday the prisoner might be killed would not suffice...[/b]
"That which produces the common good is always terrible."
The same people who denounce police violence from the heights of their lofty ideals are urging us on toward a state based on polite violence. Humanism merely upholsters the machine of Kafka's "Penal Colony". Less grinding and shouting! Blood upsets you? Never mind: men will be bloodless. The promised land of survival will be the realm of peaceful death, and it is this peaceful death that the humanists are fighting for. No more Guernicas, no more Auschwitzes, no more Hiroshimas, no more Setifs. Hooray! But what about the impossibility of living, what about this stifling mediocrity and this absence of passion? What about the jealous fury in which the rankling of never being ourselves drives us to imagine that other people are happy? What about this feeling of never really being inside your own skin?
"I shall not renounce my share of violence."
Nobody dared to announce the end of colonialism for fear that it would spring up all over the place like a jack-in-the-box whose lid doesn't shut properly. In fact, from the moment when the collapse of colonial power revealed the colonialism inherent in all power over men, the problems of race and colour became about as important as crossword puzzles. What effect did the clowns of the left have as they trotted about on their anti-racialist and anti-anti-semitic hobbyhorses? In the last analysis, that of smothering the cries of tormented Jews and negroes which were uttered by all those who were not Jews or negroes, starting with the Jews and negroes themselves. Of course, I would not dream of questioning the spirit of generosity which has inspired recent anti-racialism. But I lose interest in the past as soon as I can no longer affect it. I am speaking here and now, and nobody can persuade me, in the name of Alabama or South Africa and their spectacular exploitation, to forget that the epicentres of such problems lies in me and in each being who is humiliated and scorned by every aspect of our own society.
uuggggghhhh...that's one I cannot bear to think about. Why the hell do we have fingernails anyways?
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.