The issue of torture has been a popular one in the press the last six years or so. Surrounding the discussion about the supposed torture of terrorist “detainees” has been a whole lot of speculation, exaggeration and outright lies. Things took a turn for the surreal this week when 0bama, at his love-in curiously called a “press conference,” laid forth this:
I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “we don’t torture,” when the — the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And — and — and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what’s — what’s best in a people.
Really? The British didn’t torture? How very odd. The British newspaper The Guardian, a screamingly leftist rag if there ever was one, had something quite different to say back in 2005:
The London Cage was run by MI19, the section of the War Office responsible for gleaning information from enemy prisoners of war…
<>The London Cage was used partly as a torture centre, inside which large numbers of German officers and soldiers were subjected to systematic ill-treatment. In total 3,573 men passed through the Cage, and more than 1,000 were persuaded to give statements about war crimes. The brutality did not end with the war, moreover: a number of German civilians joined the servicemen who were interrogated there up to 1948… An assessment by MI5 pointed out that Scotland had detailed repeated breaches of the Geneva convention, with his admissions that prisoners had been forced to kneel while being beaten about the head; forced to stand to attention for up to 26 hours; threatened with execution; or threatened with “an unnecessary operation”… he was stripped, given only a pair of pyjama trousers, deprived of sleep for four days and nights, and starved. The guards kicked him each time he passed, he alleges, while his interrogators boasted that they were “much better” than the “Gestapo in Alexanderplatz”. After being forced to perform rigorous exercises until he collapsed, he says he was compelled to walk in a tight circle for four hours. On complaining to Scotland that he was being kicked even “by ordinary soldiers without a rank”, Knoechlein alleges that he was doused in cold water, pushed down stairs, and beaten with a cudgel. Later, he says, he was forced to stand beside a large gas stove with all its rings lit before being confined in a shower which sprayed extremely cold water from the sides as well as from above. Finally, the SS man says, he and another prisoner were taken into the gardens behind the mansions, where they were forced to run in circles while carrying heavy logs.
What’s exceedingly bizarre about this story is how I heard of it: NPR, a screamingly leftist radio network if there ever was one, actually ran a story today that called out 0bama on his lack of honesty regarding the British in WWII.
Now, let me be clear: torture as punishment is and always will be wrong, and should be dealt with harshly by the legal system. Torture to extract confessions is equally reprehensible, and any such confession should be torn to shreds and ignored. And obviously torture for the amusement of guards and the like needs to be stamped out with an iron boot. But torture to extract information… well, that’s where things get iffy. We go to the hoary old chestnut of “you’ve captured a terrorist who you know has just planted a nuclear time-bomb in a major city , but he won’t tell you where it is just because you ask him.” In this case, of course you use whatever means you have. To save a hundred thousand innocent lives, you lie, cheat, steal, murder, torture, terrorize. You take your own human dignity and flush it down the shitter if you have to. Hel’s belle’s, even Star Trek, a fictional universe based on one of the most optimistic, utopian visions of uplifted humanity, recognized this unpleasant fact in the best scene of the best episode of the best series of Trek. But while “whatever is necessary” is the unfortunate requirement in some cases, there are good questions to be considered as to how good torture is at extracting useful information. On the whole, it’s my understanding that it’s just not that useful, since someone being tortured will probably say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear, regardless of accuracy. So if you’ve caught Mohammad Mohammedahomida, and you know he knows where the A-Bomb is… do you smack him around? Do you give him a couple of good electrical jolts? Or… perhaps you just pump him full of sodium pentathol. I’m reasonably certain the CIA knows what actually works.
Another issue that’s become quite popular is waterboarding and whether or not it’s torture. Among the chattering classes, the answer is clear and unambiguous: yes, it’s torture. But I argue that that is far from certain. Forget all the issues about whether it causes pain, fear, panic, whatever… there is one simple test: who is willing to volunteer? As it turns out… quite a few people.
Christopher Hitchens gets wateboarded.
Some schmoe gets wateboarded on a dare.
What looks like some dirty hippie at a protest gets wateboarded.
Another schmoe gets waterboarded for laughs.
Some radio guy gets waterboarded.
Hell, YouTube is full of goofballs who have volunteered to be waterboarded. And the general concensus? It sucks, and they don’t want it to last more than a few seconds. But does that qualify it as “torture?” Well, here’s where some distinctions can be made. Would these same people who volunteered to be waterboarded volunteer for *other* forms of torture? How many are volunteering to be “beaten with a cudgel?” Or “pushed down stairs? ” Or given “unnecessary operations?” Or set on fire, electrozapulated, strangled until they passed out, kicked in the nuts, pumped full of unpleasant drugs, gnawed upon by rats, stretched on a rack, thumbscrewed, pressed, crucified or pretty much anything else that we’ve come to recognize as “torture?”
If people who have seen videos of a form of torture then decide to have it done to themselves… barring BDSM fetishists, can it be truly said that the “torture” is clearly and unambiguously “torture?”
Let’s try this. Around twenty years ago, two large men held me down while a third slit the toenails of both of my big toes right down the middle with a scalpel, then yanked out one half of each toenail with a pair of pliars. No anasthetic. This was an experience that I can assure you sticks with me quite clearly to this day. It was a pain that can be accurately described as “remarkable,” and one I’d not care to repeat. How many people who currently declare that waterboarding is torture but who would either submit to it themselves, or not do everything they can to prevent someone else from demonstrating it, would submit to having toenails pulled out with pliars? I suspect if you put that question to them, you might start to see where “enhanced interrogation techniques” separates from “torture.”
Note: It wasn’t a torture session, though it certainly felt like it. It was a botched double ingrown toenail operation. The dumbass jackass of a doctor injected the novocaine in the wrong damn place. About ten minutes *after* that little sonofabitch pulled out my toenails with a pair of pliars – all the while smiling and claiming that I couldn’t actually feel a thing – the anasthetic finally migrated to where it was supposed to be. Fricken OW.
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So, we have the usual effort to try and justify the unjustifiable by a right winger. Oh, yes, torture is bad, its nasty but its OK when Americans torture other people! No doubt about it, when Americans do it, they do it from the best of motives! Americans are blameless and faultless – their enemies made them do it!
The US has long recognised that water torture is torture. In the
US-Philippino War at the turn of the 20th century, Captain/Major Edwin
F. Glenn was disciplined for using it. As recently as the Vietnam war,
after photos were published in US newspapers in 1968 showing US
soldiers using water torture on captured NLF prisoners and were
court-martialled for it, it was obvious that “waterboarding” was
recognised as a form of torture. The Bush Administration sought to get
around that prohibition by attempting to claim that it wasn’t torture
unless the victim was physically harmed by it. That is sophistry at
its worst, as most rape victims will testify. The victims of Stalin’s
psychological torture where they were dragged from their cells many
times only to hear the click of the hammer of a revolver on an empty
chamber, might also have a word or two to say about that definition.
The US Government had, despite what was claimed by the Bush
Administration’s lawyers, already established a legal precedence that
waterboarding was indeed classified as “torture”, so please don’t
attempt the same sort of obsfucation, Mike that they did.
The US Government has an obligation, I assume under its own laws to prosecute breakers of its laws when it is discovered/admitted/understood that a breach has occurred. I know that the US Government has such an obligation under the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. A Convention that it was the prime instigator and promoter of. Or does its prohibitions against torture and its declarations that there can be no exceptions against prosecution just so much empty, hot air? Was President Reagan lying when he declared:
“Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly
express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice
unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.”
He was right in the last part of the sentence. Pity he was wrong
about the first part if these comments by you and similar ones in the media are anything to go by.
Lightning round!
Detainee “A” has set us up the bomb in a major city center! Only he knows the code to defuse it.
You have already tried to:
a. Ask him nicely
b. Offered cookies
Amazingly, he still says “no!” citing a strict weight loss plan. You only have once chance left, and the clock is ticking! What will you do next?
(Oh, ding dang it! I don’t have a context-less quote from a representative of the opposing ideology to draw from… my argument is invalid and baseless! Oh, woe!)
So, we have the usual effort to try and justify the unjustifiable by a right winger.
Burning children alive is considered a tragic but sometimes unavoidable consequence of war. If that is justifiable, I fail to see how scaring an adult combatant in a way that causes no permanent damage is unjustifiable. Wrong-headed, unworkable, illegal, perhaps, but not unjustifiable.
People seem to have forgotten that war is the result of a failure of law and civilization, and yet think that it can somehow be civilized by law. It can’t be, not really, which is one of the many reasons that war is perhaps the greatest of human tragedies.
I am sure rape victims will be glad that because there is no “permament damage” their ordeal is to be dismissed.
I am also sure that the victims of Stalin’s KGB’s habit of hauling them from their cells in the dead of night, only to hear the hammer click home on an empty chamber in the revolver held to their heads that their experience has cause no “permament damage”.
As for the “ticking time bomb” scenario, it took 183 sessions of water torture to make Sheikh Kalid to confess to what his torturers were seeking. If you’re got time to subject a suspected terrorist to 183 sessions of torture, then I’d suggest you just might find it more fruitful to actually look for the bomb or perhaps even evacuate the target so if it does go off, it won’t hurt anybody.
Its interesting though, that neither of the responses answered the questions about the value of the US Government’s signature on its own laws and international agreements. Its even more interesting that they have so effectively argued against President Reagan’s claim about America’s rejection of Torture.
The US has accepted that its enemies set its moral standards for it, it would seem.
> The US has long recognised that water torture is torture. In the
US-Philippino War at the turn of the 20th century, Captain/Major Edwin
F. Glenn was disciplined for using it.
Ah. There it is. Where can a rational debate on the waterboarding ssue be without dishonesty from the Left?
The trouble is, the story is nonsense from start to finish. The incident to which they’re referring is the court-martial of Major Edwin F. Glenn. He did not perform the torture; he was with the army adjutant general’s office and merely approved the procedure. His sentence was not 10 years hard labor, but one month suspended duty and a 50 dollar fine — a wrist-slap, given the pressure the Army was under from the Senate and elements of the popular media. And the act he approved was not waterboarding, but something they called the ‘water-cure’.
The water cure is similar to waterboarding only in that it involves water. Waterboarding — the pouring of water onto a cloth held over the victim’s nose and mouth — is a primarily psychological technique, designed to provoke an intense panic reaction to simulated drowning.
The water cure involved pouring large quantities of often dirty salty water into the victim’s stomach, until it became severely distended. The victim would then be kicked in the belly until he vomited up the water, after which, the whole thing might be repeated. Regardless of what you think of waterboarding, the water cure was a far more brutal form of physical torture.
There’s a well-written and detailed account of the whole affair in the February 25, 2008 edition of the New Yorker. It recounts that Glenn returned to duty and was eventually promoted to Brigadier-General. Like many one-star generals, there’s even a highway named after him.
If you are too lazy to do even the most basic research on this topic, or are willing to use dishonesty to further your agenda… why should anyone pay the slightest attention to anything you have to say, apart from mocking you?
A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.”
Is this waterboarding? Not even close. So why do you claim that it was? Because you’re either lazy or dishonest.
>As for the “ticking time bomb” scenario, it took 183 sessions of water torture to make Sheikh Kalid to confess to what his torturers were seeking.
No, it apparently took 183 sessions to wring him dry of whatever information they were seeking. There’s a difference.
>If you’re got time to subject a suspected terrorist to 183 sessions of torture, then I’d suggest you just might find it more fruitful to actually look for the bomb or perhaps even evacuate the target so if it does go off, it won’t hurt anybody.
Brilliant. So in your mind, losing a few hundred thousand lives in a fruitless evacuation is preferable to smacking some guy around.
> The US has accepted that its enemies set its moral standards for it, it would seem.
Perhaps we should accept a moral standard from the British? Instead of waterbaording, the CIA should employ British techniques such as beatings, starvation and unnecessary surgeries (And what might *those* be? Lung extractions?).
While the Australian Defence Force says there is no evidence prisoners taken by Australian troops have been mistreated, official documents show three have complained they were beaten around the head by secret police after being captured by the Dutch-Australian taskforce.
Perhaps we should accept the Australian standard. Instead of waterboarding, the US should just beat the shit out of terrorist suspects.
Having been waterboarded I just don’t see the bruhaha.
> Having been waterboarded I just don’t see the bruhaha.
That’s clearly because you’re just a right-wing American… probably even a neocon.
It concerns me that we are diluting the meaning of the word torture to the point that everything is torture. I’ve recently been plucking (my own) nose hairs with a needle nose plier (it’s a 45+ grooming thing) I used to trim them but they just kept growing and ripping them out means less time spent with stuff growing out of my nose.
As it turns out, apparently that’s a coercive technique that’s been used by a few countries and it qualifies as torture according to some. I guess I should be outed as an evil man.
> It concerns me that we are diluting the meaning of the word torture to the point that everything is torture.
Putting aside the joking nosehair reference, there is some serious importance in what you say. Torture has been defined so vaguely that I believe it would be fair to say that being locked into a small concrete and steel box for *decades* could be fairly described as torture, especially for someone who likes to freely roam the outdoors. And yet… who would argue that doing precisely that to someone convicted of mass murder is inappropriate?
Hunh? How is an error in fact a lie? The President’s advisors should have checked the accuracy of the article and the President’s statement before uttering that the British didn’t use torture during World War II. Explain to me how this is a lie? A statement made in ignorance or from being misinformed is not a lie. Do you have evidence that the President had knowledge that the British did use torture during World War II? The President should have been smarter and should have done his homework since such errors make him look like an ignorant ass. He should be more careful.
> How is an error in fact a lie?
I spent several years asking that very same question, after the “Bush lied, people died” meme started, calling Bush a liar for listening to the intelligence advice presented by the CIA and British intelligence. But Teh One has shown me the light, hallelujah! Being wrong on matters of fact, even when the the people who present the information *still* stick by it, means you are a liar. Even when Bush’s political opponants came out with a report that stated that Bush’s decisions, in fact, “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.” And yet… “Bush lied.”
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=141
>The President’s advisors should have checked the accuracy of the article and the President’s statement before uttering that the British didn’t use torture during World War II. Explain to me how this is a lie?
The “Guardian” article came out four years ago. While it might come as news to the likes of peons like me or you, to a President, such a thing should be well known. A President and his advisors, or in this case his handlers and his teleprompter, have the whole world of information at their fingertips.
> The President should have been smarter and should have done his homework…
Yeah, so should the American voters. Shrug.
> since such errors make him look like an ignorant ass
This is a President who drops lies fairly casually. “Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t.” Yeah…
And this is fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgEHcDj2oPo
>> The US has long recognised that water torture is torture. In the
>>US-Philippino War at the turn of the 20th century, Captain/Major Edwin
>>F. Glenn was disciplined for using it.
>Ah. There it is. Where can a rational debate on the waterboarding ssue be without dishonesty from >the Left?
Or the Right for that matter? Now, pray tell does anything you’ve provided contradict that statement? Glenn was disciplined for using water torture, was he not? While the punishment may have been lenient, it was obvious that he had been found guilty of using torture. Something the military at least found embarassing, if not necessarily immoral.
>>As for the “ticking time bomb” scenario, it took 183 sessions of water torture to make Sheikh >>Kalid to confess to what his torturers were seeking.
>No, it apparently took 183 sessions to wring him dry of whatever information they were seeking. >There’s a difference.
!83 sessions of torture. Thats a very determined set of torturers you Americans have. Appears President Reagan was lying.
>>If you’re got time to subject a suspected terrorist to 183 sessions of torture, then I’d suggest you >>just might find it more fruitful to actually look for the bomb or perhaps even evacuate the target >>so if it does go off, it won’t hurt anybody.
>Brilliant. So in your mind, losing a few hundred thousand lives in a fruitless evacuation is >preferable to smacking some guy around.
So, in your mind its OK to act like Terrorists when trying to fight a war? ’cause that is EXACTLY what you lot were doing. You were taking your moral compass from what the Terrorists were doing. You appear to be morally incompetent.
>> The US has accepted that its enemies set its moral standards for it, it would seem.
>Perhaps we should accept a moral standard from the British?
Nope. The British stand condemned as well. However there is also a big difference between the British in 1939-45 and the USA in 2008. Can you guess what it was? The British hadn’t promoted and signed a major International Convention outlawing the use of torture. The USA has. So who is worse? The country which used torture when it was only morally wrong or the country that used torture when it was both morally and legally wrong? I’ll let you work it out, if you can get your morally corrupt mind ’round it.
>While the Australian Defence Force says there is no evidence prisoners taken by Australian >troops have been mistreated, official documents show three have complained they were beaten >around the head by secret police after being captured by the Dutch-Australian taskforce.
>Perhaps we should accept the Australian standard. Instead of waterboarding, the US should just ?>beat the shit out of terrorist suspects.
Excuse me? Where has these accusations been substantiated and moreover, where has the Australian Military or the Australian Government stated that such actions are acceptable? You really do appear to have real problems understanding the criticisms being levelled against the USA over this issue. Which is why I’d suggest that your moral compass really does need realigning with that of the rest of the Western world.
As for the quibbling about what defines torture, I’d suggest that there is a more than adequate definition in the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment:
“For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”
I’d suggest you start working with the law, as it is writ, rather than trying to confuse the issue with quibbling about definitions.
The CIA director admitted the US had tortured. The Convenor of Military Tribunals admitted that the US had tortured. Now, either Bush had lied when he declared that “the US does not do torture” or he was so far out of the loop that he’s a bigger fool than he’s been accorded.
This brings into question exactly who was running his Administration and what information he was supplied with before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Considering the lack of WMDs that weren’t discovered by the UN inspectors (and was confirmed by the US military), it would suggest that either he wasn’t supplied with or understood the caveats that most intelligence summaries would containt.
Now, the choice seems to be that either Bush was an idiot – always a possibility or was attempting to engage a Henry II style defence (“who will rid me of this truculent Priest”?) or he was outright lying to the American people.
Rickshaw, you make my point for me very clearly. You refuse to even *read* what was written when it contradicts your locked-in biases. You continue to propogate *lies* to support your anti-American biases (lies such as your continued claim that what Glenn did was anything like waterboarding; that Bush lied; that smacking someone around makes one morally equivalent to a terrorist; etc.).
It’s really quite remarkable to watch.
“For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed…
Translation: putting someone in jail is torture.
“probably even a neocon.” Naw, I’m not Jewish, so I fall slightly short of that appellation. Although, I am skilled in kosher/halal butchering and food handling. Not bad for a redneck from Pearl River County, MS.
And you sum this up succinctly. Using the political left’s definition of torture means you can not even detain a person, nor ask them any question. Period. And yet they are the ones screeching&wailing for people to be imprisoned for decade long minimum sentences for their thoughts.
Too funny.
Of course you can detain a person. However, you can attempt to coerce from them information through means that will cause “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.”
Detention does not cause “severe pain or suffering”. Nor is it intended to coerce information from them. Admin, you accused me of not reading what you had written, yet here is a clear example that you appear not to understand even simple English as it is writ. Perhaps the problem is that English is a second-language for you? Its something I’ve noticed quite often amongst the Americans I encounter on the internet. As Winston Churchill once noted that the US and the UK/Commonwealth were “divided by a common language”.
As for Mr. Glenn, you appear to not understand matters of principle. Perhaps its because you are so morally deficient that you can’t accept that Mr. Glenn was punished? The punishment may have been token but he was clearly given a wrap over the knuckles for his actions. Torture was unacceptable. The form of torture might have been different but it was still under the general heading of “water torture” which also contains “water boarding”. I’d suggest you read this webpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_torture . You might find it interesting for dispelling many of the myths you seem to have about it.
> Detention does not cause “severe pain or suffering”.
Oh, no? So if I were to grab you off a street or a battlefield, taking you away from your friends, family and future, and told you that unless you gave me the information I wanted, you would never, EVER see the outside again, and instead would be locked in a small gray concrete and steel world with the scum of society…. that *wouldn’t* cause you severe mental suffereing? It’d sure fuck *me* up but good.
> As Winston Churchill once noted that the US and the UK/Commonwealth were “divided by a common language”.
So it seems. According to Dear Leader Obama, Churchill claimed that Britain didn’t torture, while at the same time agents of his state, workng in an official capacity, were beating people with cudgels and starving them to get information out of them. Apparetnly “torture” is a word that doesn’t mean what some claim it means.
> Perhaps the problem is that English is a second-language for you? Its something I’ve noticed quite often amongst the Americans I encounter on the internet.
>As for Mr. Glenn, you appear to not understand matters of principle.
When you cannot argue the facts, go to an ad hominem.
> The form of torture might have been different
The form of torture actually *was* torture.
Once again: give people the basic description of “water cure” (force gallons of dirty seawater into their stomache, then kick the shit out of them), and see how many YouTube postings there are of journalists, protestors and Extreme Jackasses who willingly undergo the treatment.
Compare that number to the number of equivalent waterboarding videos.
Your efforts at sophistry don’t become you very well. Quibble about definitions all you like. The reality is that the rest of the world does consider “waterboarding” a form of torture. The US Government before President Bush II also considered it torture. The US Military considered it torture in 1968.
Look at these photos:
http://www.geocities.com/daveclarkecb/NewPhotos/WaterTorture.jpg
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/water-boarding-1.jpg
They earnt those pictured a court martial and expulsion from the US Army. In those days, the US was honourable. It obviously isn’t now. Again, its obvious it takes its moral direction from those that it claims it is opposing and no longer upholds any standards worth talking about.
> In those days, the US was honourable. It obviously isn’t now.
Wow. Because one man was waterboarded to get information – information that saved countless lives – the US is now no lionger honorable. Because a few CIA agents acted in a way *infinitely* less brutal than British military interrogators of just a few years ago, the US is now as bad as Al Queda.
What an interesting worldview you have.
“no longer upholds any standards worth talking about”
Then why are you here, constantly yammering on and on? Do you hang around on Jihadi discussion fora?
Not one man. Several men. Further it was not just waterboarding, either. Other tortures were used. This was confirmed by the name mentioned by the Convenor of Military Tribunals as having the case abandoned against him, because torture had been used on him – Mohammed al-Qahtani. That name was not amongst the three that the CIA Director admitted had been tortured with waterboarding:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Abu Zubaydah
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
These are the only ones thus far confirmed however there is the evidence of the Rendition flights which were tracked in and out of various European airports – far more than were needed just for four suspects.
Then there were the numerous reports of suspects who were beaten and tortured such as the case of the taxi driver Dilawar who was killed by US interrogators at Bagram Airbase, being beaten to death over several days. Interesting how no one has ever been charged over his death. Once more US interrogators get their “get out of jail free” card.
Oh, and it appears that if someone criticises the US for its crimes and misbehaviour they must, in your opinion be “hanging around on Jihadi fora”. You appear to ascribe that stupid idea that unless someone is 100% with your nation they are 100% against it. Such a childish and naive viewpoint.
> You appear to ascribe that stupid idea that unless someone is 100% with your nation they are 100% against it.
No, that idea arose after some witless moron said, and I quote: “Again, its obvious it takes its moral direction from those that it claims it is opposing and no longer upholds any standards worth talking about.”
> Interesting how no one has ever been charged over his death.
In the US, it takes more than an accusation to cause someone to be charged with a crime, and there’s a presumption of innocense until proven guilty. Perhaps these concepts are beyond you. Shrug. Well, with luck, education and some growing up, perhaps someday you’ll understand.
>> You appear to ascribe that stupid idea that unless someone is 100% with your nation they are 100% against it.
>No, that idea arose after some witless moron said, and I quote: “Again, its obvious it takes its moral direction from those that it claims it is opposing and no longer upholds any standards worth talking about.”
Well, I’d suggest you wake up a bit then ’cause that is a commonly held opinion outside the USA about how the USA has acted. Unless you can provide some alternative explanation that does not attempt to try and justify the use of Torture and now it appears according to the latest reports from Afghanistan the murder of large numbers of civilians in airstrikes (perhaps it was another “wedding party”?), by avoiding your nation’s obligations under its own laws and international treaties that it is a signatory to, I think that will have to stand for the moment.
>> Interesting how no one has ever been charged over his death.
>In the US, it takes more than an accusation to cause someone to be charged with a crime, and there’s a presumption of innocense until proven guilty. Perhaps these concepts are beyond you. Shrug. Well, with luck, education and some growing up, perhaps someday you’ll understand.
Isn’t it interesting how that seems only in your mind to apply to Americans. What presumption of innocence did the four people your government has admitted torturing had? What presumption of innocence did Dilawar the Taxi Driver have before he was beaten to death by American thugs?
Yes, I call such people thugs. They have defiled the service they were members of and the uniforms they wore. They act more like gangster thugs than military people who are trained to uphold the honour of their nation. They’ve effectively trodden all over it, just as if they had torn down your flag and wiped their boots with it.
Funny how the Military Coroner’s report stated the man had been beaten to death over several days while in US military custody. Yet despite that finding, no one has been charged with his murder.
Like the admissions of torture by those in the high ranks of your previous government it takes some hide for you to sit there and claim the report of Dilawar’s death is merely an “accusation”. The man was systematically beaten to death while hung from the ceiling in chains. This lasted several days. Blood covered the walls of the shipping container it occurred in. Those thugs must have revelled in their efforts to defend your liberty for you by beating the shit out this poor little taxi driver who it turned out, was guilty of being only in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You really are lost morally aren’t you?
> the latest reports from Afghanistan the murder of large numbers of civilians in airstrikes
Ah. So they were *murdered.* The US Air Force intentionally targetted known innocent civilians, did they?
General McKiernan said a provincial governor asked for a U.S. air strike to help Afghan police battle a fairly large Taliban force, which had beheaded three local officials. He added that preliminary information from a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation indicates the U.S. air strikes did not cause the civilian deaths.
Clearly, America’s foul, intentionally misdeeds are made fully manifest.
> Yes, I call such people thugs. They have defiled the service they were members of and the uniforms they wore.
How can this be? In your mind, the US is no better than the Nazis, so the thugs (I would call such people far worse, but hey, let’s use your terminology) would actually be sterling representatives.
>You really are lost morally aren’t you?
No. But since I’m an American who recognizes that it’d be a greater moral failing to intentionally fail to save American lives, you – who are reflexively anti-American (a common flaw among many of the more small-minded, petty and jealous of those around the world) – could hardly be expected to see things beyond your black-and-white, Americans-are-evil worldview.
The problem with people like yourself, who suddenly find yourselves staggering moral absolutists when discussing the United States (and yet not so much when discussing Hamas or Iran or Venezuela or Australia), is that once you have condemned someone, then that someone sees no good reason to *not* live up to your condemnations. The US has long been declared an “imperial” nation (although we do seem to keep letting our “vassal states” go to live their own lives); so why *shouldn’t* we go and kick somebodies ass and take all their stuff? Y’all have already declared us as the lowest of the low, because some extraordinarily small number of atrocities were committed. So, fuck it.
Perhaps you think we give a rats ass whether or not you like us. Well, clearly some do… Obama and his fellow tavellers will kiss any ass, lick any boot just to get a pat on the head. Many of the rest of us really, really don’t give a damn if some whackjob on the other side of the planet gets all pissy and posts nastygrams on blogs. At worst, you are a low form of entertainment.
There you go again, mate. If I’m not 100% in line with you, I must be 100% against you. According to you, I’m reflexively “anti-American”. If I was “anti-American”, I would even be suggesting that the US was once an honourable nation nor that members of the US military were honourable.
Your logic, like your comprehension leaves a great deal to be desired.
As for your desire to be protected, it appears anybody can do anything, as long as they pander to your paranoia and fears about what other people might, just might do to you.
So much for the moral lead that America and Americans once gave to the world. Get that moral compass of your’s reset. Obama isn’t about kissing donkey’s, nor about licking boots. He’s about regaining all the respect that Doubya squandered.
> If I’m not 100% in line with you, I must be 100% against you.
I’m basing my assessment of you on your own words: “The US has accepted that its enemies set its moral standards for it, it would seem.” “You were taking your moral compass from what the Terrorists were doing. You appear to be morally incompetent.” “In those days, the US was honourable. It obviously isn’t now. Again, its obvious it takes its moral direction from those that it claims it is opposing and no longer upholds any standards worth talking about.”
Gosh, who could possibly conclude from that that you are anti-American?
For anyone else who may be playing along: Rickshaw and I have tanlged online before, where he hasdisplayed a general dislike for the United States… including going as far as siding with the Kaiser in his opinion that the US was not a “civlized” nation because we use shotguns.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
>it appears anybody can do anything, as long as they pander to your paranoia and fears about what other people might, just might do to you.
Ah. Your lack of reasoning ability on full display again. I never said anything of the kind, but hey, what’s that to stop you?
>Obama isn’t about kissing donkey’s, nor about licking boots.
Apparently you haven’t been paying attention.
I’d be interested in what beacon of moral virtue you believe has replaced the US.
So much for the moral lead that America and Americans once gave to the world.
I have seen the light! Thank you, brother… I am going to now suggest at every turn that America drop the barbaric practice of scaring people with water. And, instead, adopt much more enlightened Australian methods!
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/04/1067708212855.html
“beaten and kicked and had their heads forced down excrement-filled toilets”
“forced into cubicles where wasps’ nests were present… stirring up the nests so the detainees would be stung”
“beaten and kicked and one was struck with a rifle butt”
Is it the lack of human feces in the American waterboarding procedures that makes them that reprehensible when compared to the Australian practice? Enquiring minds want to know.
Keep digging, Admin. Its actually quite amusing. Problem is that report is from 2003 and has never been substantiated. At worse, this was perhaps some individuals acting without official sanction. If these charges could be substantiated, no excuse should for what they did and they should be severely punished.
However, for your nation we have the ADMISSIONS from your government and even high officials in the previous Administration that your country engaged in an OFFICIAL policy of torture. Further, we have seen numerous attempts by you and other Americans, including the man you apparently despise so much – the leader of your nation, your nation’s President, wanting to sweep this under the carpet and officially condone what was done.
Now, if you can’t see the difference then I really do feel sorry for you. You really need to work on that moral compass of your’s. I’m sure you can get it recalibrated quite easily down at the local DNC branch near you. 🙂
> Its actually quite amusing.
So, youi find Australian torture “amusing.” Shrug.
>your country engaged in an OFFICIAL policy of torture.
No. It engaged in an official policy of waterboarding. Not the same thing.
> I’m sure you can get it recalibrated quite easily down at the local DNC branch near you.
Really. http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/05/intelligence-re.html
A different view on British torture, from Chris Hitchins:
It would be reassuring to think that somebody close to Obama had handed him a copy of a little-known book called Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies. This was published by the British Public Record Office in 2000 and describes the workings of Latchmere House, an extraordinary British prison on Ham Common in the London suburb of Richmond, which housed as many as 400 of Hitler’s operatives during World War II. Its commanding officer was a man named Col. Robin Stephens, and though he wore a monocle and presented every aspect of a frigid military martinet (and was known and feared by the nickname “Tin-Eye”), he was a dedicated advocate of the nonviolent approach to his long-term guests. To phrase it crisply—as he did—his view was and remained: “Violence is taboo, for not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2217583/
A good summary of the piece here:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/05/hitchens_on_churchill_and_tort.php#c1620423
Actually, I find your efforts to try and squirm out of this amusing. Keep it up, its better than watching a comedy show.
And yet again we see another effort at sophistry. Waterboarding is torture according to the definition that your Government helped created and documented in the UN Convention Against Torture and which it then signed up for. Keep wriggling. Its funny.
Ah, finally after all your diversions, you’re getting back to the actual topic of the post (rather than your invented strawmen). Is waterboarding torture?
As I asked in the post… how many journalists would willingly undergo having their toenails pulled out? How many are volunteering to be “beaten with a cudgel?” Or “pushed down stairs? ” Or given “unnecessary operations?” Or set on fire, electrozapulated, strangled until they passed out, kicked in the nuts, pumped full of unpleasant drugs, gnawed upon by rats, stretched on a rack, thumbscrewed, pressed, crucified or pretty much anything else that we’ve come to recognize as “torture?”
If you cannot recognize that a great many people see that there is a fundamental different between waterboarding and “water cure,” between being frightened and being physically harmed, then it is clear that it is you who has the difficulty in thinking about this issue rationally. You have chosen a definition of torture that is so vague that there is quite literally no punishment that can be meted out to criminals. Hell, there’s no punishment that can be meted out by parents to misbehaving *children.*
You choose to try and make an artificial distinction between “waterboarding” and the “water cure”. Both are intended as the UN Convention defines it as, “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”
BOTH “waterboarding” and the “water cure” fit within that definition.
BOTH are considered to be forms of torture. Both are intended to, “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,” and is “intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”
You appear to be trying to redefine “waterboarding” as not a form of torture because it does not “leave any lasting physical damage” to its victims. However, it does leave as any of the victims who have suffered it and lived to talk about it, after their torture has finished, lasting psychological damage. Because it plays upon the innate fear of drowning that all people have, it causes psychological harm.
Now, remember, President Reagan declared that the US found Torture abhorrent. It signed the UN Convention. It accepted that definition. Now, you can be hypocritical, as you have been or are, about the issue and lie and try and claim that “waterboarding” is not torture. You can try and use sophistry, to create a new, artificial definition which has no meaning in law but the fact remains, the US signed up to the UN Convention. In fact it helped create it and promoted it heavily, around the world, urging other nations to sign up to it. All your’s and the previous Administration’s efforts to try and subvert that simply show the immoral nature of what you’re doing. Effectively, you’re as bad as the Islamists that you claim you’re opposing.
> You choose to try and make an artificial distinction between “waterboarding” and the “water cure”.
Yes, because they are completely different things. Since this simple fact escapes you – or you refuse to acknowledge it – I see no reason to waste my time on you any further.
No, they are both the same thing – TORTURE. You appear to want to differentiate whereas the rest of the world recognises them both for what they are – TORTURE.
> the rest of the world recognises them both for what they are – TORTURE.
Wrong. The whole world *doesn’t* agree on that. And it’s not country-by-country, but person-by-person. Until you recognize and acknowledge that fact, you will remain a marginalized fringe exgtremist.
Admin, the signatories of the UN Convention on Torture recognise them both as torture. Even the US Government recognised them as torture until that fool in the White House decided they weren’t. Look at the recent testimony by Ali Soufan about the stupidity of resorting to torture,
Harsh interrogation techniques ineffective,’ former FBI agent testifies
* http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=3842
By WARREN P. STROBEL
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — A former FBI special agent who interrogated senior al-Qaida captives told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that harsh interrogation techniques are “ineffective, slow and unreliable,” and disputed claims by former Vice President Dick Cheney and others that they helped uncover major terrorist plots.
Ali Soufan, a veteran FBI investigator, said that CIA officials and others responsible for the extreme measures inflated the program’s successes and downplayed the consequences of physical abuse.
“The situation was, and remains, too risky to allow someone to experiment with amateurish, Hollywood-style interrogation methods that in reality taints sources, risks outcomes, ignores the end game and diminishes our moral high ground,” Soufan said.
“It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al-Qaida,” he said.
Former State Department official Philip Zelikow, who in 2005 was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s point man in a battle to overhaul the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies, joined Soufan in criticizing the use of techniques such as waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning that’s widely considered torture.
Zelikow said the U.S. could combat terrorism without resorting to extreme methods.
“Others may disagree,” he said. “The government, and the country, needs to decide whether they are right. If they are right, our laws must change, and our country must change. I think they are wrong.”
Cheney has argued that the now-defunct CIA program, which included a global network of secret prisons, produced valuable intelligence that thwarted terror attacks and saved American lives.
Cheney, who’s scheduled to give a major speech on the subject next week at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington policy organization, has called for the release of two classified CIA memos that he says detail the program’s successes.
However, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a member of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees, said he’s seen the two documents and they don’t prove Cheney’s case.
Soufan’s testimony apparently was the first public appraisal by a senior U.S. government interrogator who dealt directly with suspected terrorists in CIA custody.
It came a month after President Barack Obama released four Bush-era Justice Department legal memos justifying methods that included confinement boxes, sleep deprivation and slamming detainees into walls. That reopened the debate over whether top Bush officials should be investigated and prosecuted for their actions.
Adding to the drama, Soufan testified from behind a screen where the senators, but not the audience, could see him. Since at least one photo of Soufan is available on the Internet, the reason for the security measures wasn’t readily apparent.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who’s also an Air Force Reserve lawyer, said the Bush administration erred in its reading of the law but argued that harsh interrogation techniques sometimes produce valuable information.
He challenged Soufan to dispute that.
“I can only speak to my experience,” the former FBI agent replied.
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Graham retorted.
Soufan was a lead FBI interrogator of Abu Zubaydah, one of the first major al-Qaida figures to be captured after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The initial interrogation of Zubaydah, using the bureau’s traditional, rapport-building techniques, yielded valuable intelligence, including the role of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, he said.
Then-CIA director George Tenet congratulated the interrogators – until he learned that they were from the FBI, not the CIA, Soufan said. A team from the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center that included a government contractor quickly replaced him and his colleagues. They introduced harsh interrogation techniques, and Zubaydah’s cooperation stopped, Soufan said.
After complaints from officials in Washington about the dried-up intelligence flow, Soufan and colleagues reverted to the traditional approach, and Zubaydah began talking again.
To bolster the Democrats’ case against torture, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., released summaries of Soufan’s interrogations of another al-Qaida figure, Abu Jandal, who was a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden. Without being tortured, Jandal divulged intimate details and personal histories of bin Laden’s inner circle, the 100 pages of documents appear to show.
The hearing took place amid an escalating political fracas over what congressional Democrats knew at the time about the CIA program. Republicans say that documents call into question House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s contention that she wasn’t briefed about waterboarding.
Zelikow called the CIA program “a collective failure, in which a number of officials and members of Congress (and staffers), of both parties, played a part.”
Zelikow wrote a classified February 2006 memo challenging the legal reasoning of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The White House responded by ordering copies of the memo destroyed, but Zelikow said his six-page document has been retrieved from State Department files and is undergoing declassification review.
ON THE WEB
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=3842
> the signatories of the UN Convention on Torture recognise them both as torture.
And yet… the *people* do not widely agree (as repeatedly demonstrated by the willingness of people to have themselves waterbaorded… but not stretched on a rack, burned, cut, nails extracted, etc.). Which is the entire point that you keep missing. You listen to UN bureaucrats, but not to the citizenry. That says it all.
This thread proves there are always “useful fools”(tm) who will do stupid things, Admin. I’ll go with the testimony of the FBI interrogator. Torture doesn’t work. You can, as the Bard once suggested, “call a rose by any other name but it would still smell as sweet.” Water cure, waterboarding – both are forms of water torture. It took 183 sessions to break one al Q’aeda terrorist and 83 another. Yet the FBI had them talking in much less time, with much easier methods. The reality is that you, like many Americans are after revenge. You’ve been hellbent on it ever since 11 September 2001. You’re terrified that someone, just some where might want to kill some Americans. The end result is that you’re not interested in stopping them and punishing them or preventing them, you just want to punish them, no matter how remote their connection might be to any real plots against your nation. You realise you have more chance of being struck by lightning than being killed by a Terrorist? Thats the problem with this issue – no sense of proportion.
>This thread proves there are always “useful fools”(tm) who will do stupid things
Indeed so… like making rigid dogmatic statements, and proclaiming that anyone who disagrees with them is morally flawed.
> Thats the problem with this issue – no sense of proportion.
Exactly so. A few CIA agents roughed up some scumbags, and all of a sudden the United States is a nation on moral par with the worst of the lot.
You grow tiresome.