Two reasons why NO is the only answer to torture

Two reasons why NO is the only answer to torture

1) The official purpose (unless we have since moved on to pure sadism) is to extract information. If you need to extract information, it means you do note have it. If you do not have the information, then you cannot even know that there is information. Hence allowing torture means, by definition, that you allow "unnecessary" torture.

2) Those who defend torture, or even worse who claim that torture isn't actually torture ("Heck sleep deprivation isn't that bad, I myself woke up this morning at 5 a.m. after going to bed at 1 a.m.") would not accept it to be done to themselves. Just to test this : suppose one of you travel to country X for tourism, wander too close to a military base (despite warning signs in country X's language), and get arrested - would you be ok with being sleep-deprived "for a few days", drowned "but just to pretend", beaten "mildly" and threatened, just to see if you are not an ennemy spy ?

 

There is actually a thread on this, probably get loads of interest in there.

 

To the ears of patriots this goes in one ear and out the other

 

personally I think there's nothing wrong with torture. Countries just need to get better at who they are torturing; a tourist who comes from wherever to look at the sights ain't doin' nothing wrong, but if the military busts into a commanders' meeting with the top military strategists and such, then break their bodies, minds, and spirits

 

*Cancels trip to Thailand...turns around... puts on blindfold... throws dart at map... takes off blindfold...says to self..."Dam! Vietnam"...:undecided:

You put out a good arguement pixel, but unless you've got about ooooo 200 or 300 billion dollars to "donate" the government seems to act deaf toward us.

 

How about confirmation of information that you already possess?

Igrnoance of the law is no excuse.
If I broke the laws of a country I was in as a tourist, I am subject to the laws and punishments of that country.
If they did these things to me to determine if I was a foreign intelligence agent sent to gather privileged information from that military base, it'd suck, but it would still have been my own ignorance that was the cause. From the scenario you painted, no permanent damage would be done.

 

Good point Talga. Information gained through torture can also resolve conflicting pieces of information. The logical flaw in the first arugment is the assumption that "if you do not have the information, then you cannot even know that there is information." This is not true. I know that there is all sorts of information I don't know. Knowledge of the existence of information is not the same as actually knowing the information. For example, I know you can drive from Boston to LA, but I don't know how far it is.

 

AeroJonesy

True.

An example: I see you leaving a ATM where I saw you access your account and withdraw some cash. I, therefore, know that you have an existing PIN, but I do not know it's sequence because I did not see you input the PIN. I then torture you to get that information and your bank card.

 

That doesn't make sense. If you want to know where some guy is, you know very well that the information exists.

Personally, I've got nothing against torture. Plenty of cruelties in humankind, and torture is the least of them. At least, it's honest.

 

A slow day at work has me browsing around in forums I don't normally see. Then I stumbled on to this one. Prepare the soap box.

I've been in the Army (U.S.) for over 12 years now. I started out enlisted for about my first 8 years, and I've been an officer for over 4 years now. I've done a few tours "over there" and been fairly highly decorated for it. I've lived in a few foreign counties, and even brought my family to some. I'm also a military brat (my father is retired US Air Force) and I have a good % of other family members in the various services. My Grandfathers (like just about everyone else) were called up for WWII, only 1 was deployed to Europe. Going back to WWI my distant relatives were on the other side (Germany). Yes I feel the need to give you my background before I reply. I think I have a valid point of view on this topic. Having said that - this is all personal opinion, not anything more official than that.

Torture - never.

Questioning - sure.

This seems like a simple enough to draw, but its actually kinda blurry. This isn't necessary a bad thing. Water boarding, beating, etc - these are definatly torture and should never be condoned. Besides we (well, mostly others) have proven time and again that torture doesn't get results in the form of good intelligence. Past a certain point people will say anything to make the pain stop. Yes, sometimes they will give you what you want to know, but more often than not they just make something up.

Now aggressive questioning, that's a different story. I see nothing wrong with things like rapid fire questioning, solitary confinement, and giving them false information, sleep deprivation - maybe in limited amounts. Most of this is covered by the Geneva Convention. They should be treated humanly and with respect, but there is no requirement or moral imperative that we have to make them comfortable.

If you wake someone up after only 3 hours of sleep to question them - fine. If you allowed them to sleep the night before and you let them sleep the night after, going for 24 hours without sleep isn't really sleep deprivation in my views. If you're shouting at them and firing question after question for hours at a time - fine. By all means isolate them from others prisoners. But isolating them for extended periods (over 30 days) does start to become torture itself.

The Geneva Convention also mandates that POW's must be returned to their original country after the conflict is over. As far as the US goes and our continued holding of prisoners, I think they should all be given the normal POW status and treated as such. I don't think the armed conflict is over (was there ever a declared war?) so I don't see any problem with holding them longer. We should probably define what will define the end of the armed conflict, just so there is a clear line. Yes this is a different kind of war, different than what we were prepared for and different than the kind most international laws (and the Geneva Convention covers), but we should try to apply is as clearly as possible. Even if we are not at war against a uniformed army (like the Geneva Convention requires) we should still try to apply the laws of war. We were never at war with the country of Afghanistan, just the Taliban. We are still at war with the Taliban, just ask them. The same thing goes for Iraq, sort of. Yes we were at war with the country of Iraq, but that war ended. All captured Iraqi troops were turned back over to the country of Iraq after the war was declared over. We are now fighting an internal war against various terrorist groups. Until they want to declare an end to the war, any captured members can be held until the war ends.

Now to further complicate this whole thing is that at the same time as there is a war going on against various declared and undeclared terrorist groups there is also plain old common ethnic violence. It's often impossible to tell which is which. But the rules for common criminals are different. There are local, national and international laws for criminals. They should be turned over to the criminal system as applicable. Yes, this is probably the hardest part because as I've said, you often can't tell which is which. What are you going to do, ask them? It’s even possible for someone to do both at the same time. Very muddy water I'm afraid.

Why draw the line? Why not push it farther? Why not torture whoever we want as much as we want, after all they'd do it to us.

There are mainly two reasons, aside from my earlier point that torture doesn't really get you anything. They both tie together.

Is this how you would like to be treated? Yes, the whole "do unto others" thing comes into play. More then just yourself, from a military perspective, is this how you'd like your own troops to be treated? We cannot expect anyone else to treat our prisoners better than we treat theirs.

We need to take the moral high ground here even if our enemies do not. If we lead the calls for change people will listen, it may not be immediate, but they do listen. If we aren't following our own rules, how can we expect others to?

There's also a lesser side to this. We saw in the first gulf war, and somewhat again in the start of the Iraq invasion. If we treat prisoners fairly it will discourage them from fighting us in the first place. In the first gulf war, we treated them so much better than Saddam did that his Army deserted in mass. Our biggest problem wasn't the war; it was dealing with the endless supply of POW's. These are also the kind of prisoners you want. They couldn't wait to tell us all the intelligence we'd ever want to know - and you didn't have to question the validity of it.

We often demand that our soldiers take some extreme risks. Knowing that we treat our enemies fairly and we will demand that they treat us fairly is a must. Otherwise its one more thing that drags in the back of your mind and impairs performance. As an American soldier, we have a code of conduct to follow if captured; all we ask is that our enemies follow the rules agreed to in the Geneva Convention.

The more we can hold to the moral high ground and show that we are trying to help, the more cooperation and assistance we get, not just from detainees, but from the host nation and international community at large. This goes beyond just torture, it needs to be an entire political philosophy.

For the record I'm a strong conservative republican and proud member of the military. I don't think we're all the big evil, unthinking mob that some make us out to be.

 

Good points from someone who has been there.
Thanks for posting that.

 

I'd prefer you use the box that holds the liquor bottles. What? It's not empty! Dammit. Well we'd better fix that problem:thumbsup:

Good to have you aboard. Pull up a chair, no need to remove your cover in here and prepare to be hated. Did I mention this place is chocked full of nutjobs libs? I didn't? Sorry about that. It is. Good thing is I'm quite good at drawing them in. So how's about I lure them near and you blast them ok? Good.:thumbsup:

 

Not sure I can go with you on this one, sorry. Yes I'm a Bush supporter, but he's made his share of mistakes too. The best we can do it to admit them, correct them the best we can, then move on.

No amount of blasting is necessary. You'll win more people over with cool level headed argument and a rational discussion. I know I'm right and I'll show you why I'm right.

 

Poor, sweet, naive nOOb MageChick. This is the OTF. You'll learn better

 

This quote alone shows the learning curve has begun.

 

I don't think so. Someone else will just show their *** trying to argue with me. I don't sink down to that level. They just come out looking like and *** and generall prove my point for me - or at least show that I have the morally superior argument.

 

Look if you guys want to justify torture, you're going to have to provide a more dire scenario.

For example, if you catch a Arabic guy playing in a plane cockpit immediately after 9-11 with bombs strapped to his body, then it's a whole lot easier to justify torture to that specific guy.

Or if you catch a guy reaking with radioactivity red-handed carrying a live-mini-nuke strolling down 5th Avenue talking to Allah, then again it's easier to ask permission to torture that specific guy.

But if you want a card-blanch to torture anyone who you had a "gut feeling" of terrorism, you're not going to get it.

And you can play with words games all you want, but the problem with torture up to now isn't the touchy-feely stuff the White House Propaganda gang puts out to get Ann Coulture excited.

The problem is the CIA's conduct including breaking knee caps, beatings, and sodomizing that have resulted in 22 detainees deaths.

Let's not suggar-coat this torture issue.

 

I've been at it since 2002 and they still haven't learned. But it's fun watching them go nuts so I keep at it.:thumbsup:

BTW have you checked out tradesports.com? If not, you should. It'll help make correct predictions on the upcoming election.

 

So tell me Mage ... did you agree with our invasion of Iraq in 2003? Knowing the facts today, would you still agree with the invasion and/or our continued occupation today?

 

jimmyboy:

I'm curious about your source for that information. I do hope you realize that just because a detainee died in prison doesn't necessarily mean that his death was a result of abuse by the CIA. Just like in a normal prison, many detainees are from rival groups that fight amongst themselves. Also, it is entirely possible that one detainee would kill another detainee if he caught him talking to the authorities.

I'm not saying that's the case, I just want more details.