Are we OK with torture now?

[toasty]

Yet another story has been released detailing the torture of prisoners, this time at Guantanamo:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050201/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_videotapes

As I read through the story, it occurs to me that nothing has really happened in terms of personnel changes relative to the torture scandal in Iraq. Normally, when something of that sort breaks, there is public outcry, followed by investigation and some heads rolling, then things are basically back to normal. With this, however, there was public outcry, a cursory investigation and no real ramifications for the folks in charge. By now, I think it is pretty clear that the abuse was not the work of a handful of rogue solidiers -- the abuse was fairly widespread, and people higher up than those that have been tried were at least aware that it was going on. Yet, nothing has happened to those in charge -- the status quo is that we're involved in torture, and the limited amount of press these types of things get suggests that the public isn't terribly concerned about it anymore.

Does this mean that we in the US are OK with torture? It sure seems that way. The public outcry over torture has faded into the mix of generalized complaints about the current administration, and the Senate is about to approve the guy who wrote the memos authorizing torture to be the next AG without a serious fight.

Troubling...

[Jenks]

Depends on what kind of information we're getting.

[thesightless]

hey im all for it when its required. i.e. we catch a guy with radiation traces on him plans for a dirty bomb attack. IMO, if i gotta cut the fuckers toes off one by one and have an EMT keep him alive till he talks, i hope people realize its being done to save a lotta lives. and i think we damn well should be able to torture info outta anyone with knowledge of bin laden. just my points, i know people feel differently.

but in the case of abu gharib, those officers were just plain stupid. it wasnt torture, it was needless humilitation. they are guilty and deserve whatever jail time they got/get. but i think we should allow people to drug/beat/whatever the guy we just caught last week (al zarquawi's associate) :?

one more on the edit

the one's crying about female MP's should be escorted only by females in the future. its not torture to have to deal with a woman MP. they are after all villians who murder and pillage.

[Yao]

1: Not all of them were guilty.
2: With torture, you can make any man say anything you want him to say. And you don't let him know what you want hear, he'll spit out whatever he can come up with, which is usually useless.

There's enough ways to break a man's mind without torture, and even those methods don't always have the desired result. So no, I'm not for torture.

[thesightless]

yeah, when its oppurtune to , but if there is a bomb thats gonna go off in a few hours, what do you do>

1. break a kneecap with the butt of your M4? no talk, blow off a toe. after losing the use of a few limbs without any sedation, the guy will cry like a 3 year old getting a shot in the ass.

2. wait an hour for a doctor to get thier, another half hour to adminter some penthalmorphine or similiar agent, let it take effect then try to talk it out of him..(total time easily could exceed 4-6 hours)


cirmcumstances dictate whether its neccessary or not. and none of bin ladens guys will speak even with torture, so we're screwed there.

weird torture method i read about. (chinese orgin)

1. they tie your arms out the sides in a Jesus style pose.
2. put you in a pool of water up to your ribcage
3. leave you standing there
4. after about 2 days, you legs begin to go out and your sink in the water up to yourneck/chin
5. the pressure of your muscles atrophying in the water creates a feeling similar to being killed by a Boa constrictor. this takes about 3 more days to happen so you have plenty of time to think. eventually the pressure literally causes your lower abdomen to cave in and kill

[mixu]

Re: Are we OK with torture now?

Anyone hear about Jon Ronson's investigation of interrogation techniques...

The interrogators were getting more and more cross with Jamal's apparent steely refusal to crack. Also, Jamal used his time inside the Brown Block to do stretching exercises, keeping himself sane. Jamal's exercise regime made the interrogators more angry, but instead of beating him, or threatening him, they did something very odd.

A military intelligence officer brought a ghetto blaster into his room. He put it on the floor in the corner. He said, "Here's a great girl band doing Fleetwood Mac songs."

He didn't blast the CD at Jamal. This wasn't sleep-deprivation, and it wasn't an attempt to induce the Bucha Effect1. Instead, the agent simply put it on at normal volume.

"He put it on," said Jamal, "and he left."

"An all-girl Fleetwood Mac covers band?" I said.

"Yeah," said Jamal.

This sounded to me like the tip of a very strange iceberg.

"And what happened next?" I asked.

"When the CD was finished, he came back into the room and said, 'You might like this.' And he put on Kris Kristofferson's greatest hits. Normal volume. And he left the room again. And then, when that was finished, he came back and said, 'Here's a Matchbox Twenty CD.' "

"Was he doing it for entertainment purposes?" I asked.

"It's interrogation," said Jamal. "I don't think they were trying to entertain me."

"Matchbox Twenty?" I said.

I didn't know much about Matchbox Twenty. My research reveals them to be a four-piece country rock band from Florida, who do not sound particularly abrasive (like Metallica and Burn Motherfucker Burn!) nor irritatingly repetitive (like Barney The Purple Dinosaur and Ya! Ya! Das Is A Mountain). They sound a bit like REM. The only other occasion when I had heard of Matchbox Twenty was when Adam Piore from Newsweek told me that they, too (like Metallica and Barney), had been blasted into the shipping containers where detainees were held at al-Qa'im in Iraq. I mentioned this to Jamal and he looked astonished.

"Matchbox Twenty?" he said.

"Their album More Than You Think You Are," I said.

There was a silence.

"I thought they were just playing me a CD," said Jamal. "Just playing me a CD. See if I like music or not. Now I've heard this, I'm thinking there must have been something else going on. Now I'm thinking, why did they play that same CD to me as well? They're playing this CD in Iraq and they're playing the same CD in Cuba. It means to me there is a programme. They're not playing music because they think people like or dislike Matchbox Twenty more than other music. Or Kris Kristofferson more than other music. There is a reason. There's something else going on. Obviously I don't know what it is. But there must be some other intent."

"There must be," I said.

Jamal paused for a moment and then he said, "You don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes, do you? But you know it is deep. You know it is deep."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1343776,00.html

[toasty]

yeah, when its oppurtune to , but if there is a bomb thats gonna go off in a few hours, what do you do>

1. break a kneecap with the butt of your M4? no talk, blow off a toe. after losing the use of a few limbs without any sedation, the guy will cry like a 3 year old getting a shot in the ass.

2. wait an hour for a doctor to get thier, another half hour to adminter some penthalmorphine or similiar agent, let it take effect then try to talk it out of him..(total time easily could exceed 4-6 hours)

Sounds like someone's been watching a lot of 24...

:wink:

[thesightless]

lol, damn straight, but also spent 3 years in army intel, there are some fucked up people out there.

[Yao]

yeah, when its oppurtune to , but if there is a bomb thats gonna go off in a few hours, what do you do>

1. break a kneecap with the butt of your M4? no talk, blow off a toe. after losing the use of a few limbs without any sedation, the guy will cry like a 3 year old getting a shot in the ass.

2. wait an hour for a doctor to get thier, another half hour to adminter some penthalmorphine or similiar agent, let it take effect then try to talk it out of him..(total time easily could exceed 4-6 hours)


cirmcumstances dictate whether its neccessary or not. and none of bin ladens guys will speak even with torture, so we're screwed there.

The problem is, they've been tortured on suspicions of being related to that fudgepacker, it's another thing to know that someone is (quoting your example) the one that places a bomb and refuses to tell you. In the latter case I might be the one breaking the kneecap myself, in the first case, never.

[thesightless]

exactly yao.

abu gharib himilliation aside, most of those insurgents/villians/whatevr PC term you wanna use, knew damn well what and where bomb making houses, arms depots the rest of the insurgents were gonna use... so, treat them humanely and risk troops and civvies, or let someone hit em in head with a pistol butt....

the least of the problems were the ones on TV. they didnt actually hurt them, they just humiliated them... im sure the interrorgators from pakistan had a lot more ""freedom""in the interrogation room.

[Yao]

I bet they did man...there must be a whole bunch of gruesome stories hidden away from us right now.

[neoee]

So Sightless you would ok torture even knowing that in some cases we will end up torturing innocent person as well?

[thesightless]

sadly, yeah...... i ahte to admit it.

while the saying"" sacrifice one to save many"" is cliche and wrong to the sacrificee, you very well could be saving thousands in the end.

bad example, but example nonetheless is

"40 people work in private- non-militray bio lab where smallpox is stored. the scientists come in one day to find some samples missing. assume its impossible for a break in theft
do you a) take the 40 people and go to all means neccessary to find out where the samples are immediately (i.e. torture- whether physical or chemical)
or-
b) wait for the virus to break out and try to stop it, knwoing full well that one of the first to die was a lab employee and the culprit at hand.

its not that i advocate it, but sometimes it is neccessary to do anything to save lives. and i do agree those morons at abu gharib disgraced thier uniforms.

one more. FBI stumbles upon a terror cell, plane training manuals, bomb plans, and a list of filghts.... there is a remaining terrorist in custody . risk another 9/11 (maybe worse) or beat the guy to an inch of life in an attempt to stop it?

lastly, ill use an example from what i did for ARMY
you find out a known financeer just gave 5 million to a known militant with ties to terror. obviously we trace the account and bring in the financeer. he says nothing in preliminary interrorgation. we go to the bank where the money was withdrawn from the account, and see the suspect on the CCTV. traffic cameras and external CCTV get the plates of the vehilcle used in transprtation. you have local police track the vehilcle and raid the location of the building and find 2 people in the room, with fake ID's for 4 more people, the 2 people have a fearful sense of accomplishment. what would you do if you were the CO in that room, right there?

all im saying is its a dark world, NYC/madrid trains/tokyo subways/northern ireland, this stuff happens every day. we just dont hear about it. :? :cry:

[neoee]

Re: Are we OK with torture now?

I understand that in the end we would mean well but I have a problem giving the government a blank check. I made a post in response to one of your own in regards the the Patriot Act and how it defies the very principles this country was founded on. You may not have seen it since most of my posts are made durning off hours. It seems to parallel this topic in that we are giving our government more authority without any accountability.

In the state of Illinois, IIRC, 50% of convictions were found to have imprisioned innocent people after DNA comparisions became available. This is after the issue has been put through the system. What happens when we go off of initial instincts, under pressure? What makes one innocent persons life less substantial than the person(s) you will save, regardless of the quantity? What if it was you father or mother that was suspected? Still ok with you?

Under the umbrella of the Patriot Act we have had many cases of people being held as suspected terrorists due to knee jerk reactions. These people were held with no ability to consult an attorney, no charges filed against them, and held for extended periods of time only to later be released. So now you want to ok torture even with the gross injustice that has already been shown?

Also keep in mind that the terrorists we are now dealing with are a completely different breed... they are willing to die for their cause. What happens when these people start carrying around sianide capsules to avoid the torture? In the meanwhile we'll be beating innocents within inches of their lives. Then what have we accomplished?

I'll remind you that the days following 9/11 our own government said that if we change our way of life then the terrorists win. They hate us for our freedoms and want to take them from us. They are against democracy and our system of checks and balances. The Patriot Act, and now the ok to torture? Looks like they have already won from where I'm sitting.

[thefncrow]

The problem with what a lot of you are saying, this idea that torture becomes OK in time-sensitive situations, is that people who are tortured usually give up a whole lot of false info before they'll give you the truth. Knowing something is imminent but having no leads is bad, but knowing something's imminent and discovering the lead you've been chasing is bullshit is worse, because you've wasted time and manpower that you cannot spare. Your solutions don't make sense when people will tell you whatever you want to know to get you to stop torturing them.

Then there's the whole issue of how torture is a reprehensible practice, and how the end fails to justify the means, and about ten thousand other things. I've got a lot more problems with torture aside from just the first paragraph, but too many of you seem to think "Well, we'll get them to reveal their plans to us, and so its all OK."

But, hey, if you want to be the one responsible when it comes out that you couldn't stop the next terrorist attack because you were too busy chasing false information and torturing people, well, you go ahead. I'll be part of the rational world which will condemn you and your actions.