Well thank you very much for quoting me completely out of context. I was specifically talking about the interrogation techique of sleep deprivation. Exactly how many Irish were radicalized because this technique was used?
Here’s the exact quote:
If we’re going to debate this subject, let’s at least do it honestly.
Exactly!
This kind of discussion, the fact that it even has to be discussed, could be expected at a Russian board where most of the guys would be soldiers from Chechenya.
Added with the fact that the main media is mostly selling Murdoch-type-headlines, and that the people seem not to care about the democracy anymore, the real question is: When will our culture be over-run by other cultures?
The higher moral ground is already lost, as this thread clearly shows.
Henry
Doh! That was my misreading of how Evil Captor quoted you in post 32 and just being generally rushed. No malice or dishonesty was intended.
I do apoligise.
So, you claim the essence of the Convention is that soldiers are human and civilians are subhuman ?
It is also against the board rules to wish death on another poster.
Do not do this agin, even as a hypothetical.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
What about if I don’t support torture, but I get my rocks off by fantasizing about it? Where does that put me in the scale of human worth?
[ Moderator Mode ]
Everyone:
You will all knock off the personal observations.
There have been a (very) few actual debate posts here, and I am not happy with the whole idea of a thread based on a declaration of personal moral superiority, so this thread is on the short list for closings if you all do not keep the discussion a lot more civil.
**
[ /Moderator Mode ]**
No, because I don’t consider the 2 interrogation techniques that I’m discussing here to be torture (see my very first post in this thread). But, those techniques **are **contrary to the Geneva convention for the treatment of POWs. I’m rejecting the false dichotomy that you either abide by the Geneva convention for the treatment of POWs or you advocate the use of torture. There is a lot of ground between those two positions. I’m not, for example, in favor of treating Khalid Shaikh Mohommed as a POW. OTOH, I’m not in favor of having him just “disappear” into some secret CIA prison system either.
n.b.: I’m not here to defend Bush. I can’t figure out exactly where he’d draw the line, and so I’m unwilling to give him the blank check he seems to want. I think he wrecked his chance at a reasonable compromise by not putting out some sort of proposal that could be worked with. Given that intransigence, the McCain amendment was probably the best that Congress could do, although I think it is overly restricive. That’s Bush’s fault, though.
No problem. You might want to be careful about taking a quote by one poster from the post of another poster. Original source, baby! 
Yeah, that’s what I’ve been advocating all along. Damn, you found me out. :rolleyes:
Look, if you want to debate this, quit throwing out stawmen arguments. It’s possible to treat different classes of people differently and not consider one class to be subhuman. You do realize, for instance, that every country I can think of treats POWs differently than it treats spies, right? POWs ≠ Spies.
No, I can’t. I think “my” argument has been pretty well rebutted in this thread, and I’m glad it has. I was just trying to see if there was any reason, even an invalid one, why a well-intentioned person might think torture was good policy, unless they had a sadistic streak. (From what I know of Bush and Cheney, I don’t know whether they have said sadistic streak or not.)
There is no gray zone between the Geneva convention and torture.
Henry
Differently yes, but if you treat someone worse than most people will treat animals, what does that say about how you feel about them ? Also, it’s not a strawman to simply point out what you said. The only interpetation I can get from you’re arguements is that if someone has a uniform, they have rights, but if the have no uniform they have no rights. I don’t believe that non military people deserve fewer rights; I don’t think it’s right to grab someone and torture them just because they aren’t military.
Your spy example is actually an example for my side, since spies ( or suspected spies ) are often shot without trial, like that famous photo from Vietnam. Just because it’s common doesn’ mean it’s not barbaric.
What does the Geneva convention say that we can do to spies?
Note that I said the Geneva Convention as it pertains to POWs. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, for example, is not a POW. That’s the issue. Many on this board have argued that POW status applies to members of al Qaeda. That is demonstrably false:
But here’s the thing. The Geneva convention regulates how POWs should be treated. But it doesn’t require that soldiers can only take prisoners if 1)They are clearly identified enemy soldiers or 2)They have a warrant.
Soldiers in combat can take people prisoner. Until such time as they have been judged not to be POWs they have to be treated as POWs. But the thing is POWs can be captured without a warrant, they can be held indefinately without a trial as long as hostilities are ongoing. No warrant, no trial, just detained.
Look, the purpose of the Geneva convention is to prevent a side from holding trials of enemy prisoners on charges of murder because they were shooting back. But it isn’t always not a crime to shoot at soldiers. If I were to go over to a nearby US army base and start shooting at the soldiers there I wouldn’t be captured and treated under the Geneva Conventions, I’d be tried for murder or attempted murder (assuming I survived to be captured). However, if I were a member of the Iraq military and I shot at US soldiers during the invasion I could never be tried for murder, no matter how many US soldiers I killed.
One action is the action of a criminal, the other action is the action of an enemy soldier. Criminals have different protections than enemy soldiers…not better protections, not worse protections, but different protections. Enemy soldiers can be taken captive without warrant, held without trial, and shot at even when they don’t pose an immanent danger. Criminals can’t be arrested without warrant or probable cause, can’t be held without trial, and can only be shot at if they pose an immediate deadly danger. But enemy soldiers can only be held during ongoing wars, can’t be tried or convicted unless guilty of war crimes, etc. But note that it is a war crime to fire at enemy soldiers while not wearing a uniform or equivalent.
This is a gross mischaracterization of his position.
Soldiers have rights regarding their treatment after capture.
(Accused) Criminals have rights regarding their treatment after capture.
They are not the same rights. A soldier may not be asked any more than his name, rank, and serial number–information necessary to identify him so that the capturing force may notify his force that he has been captured. An accused criminal may be asked to tell where he was at the time a crime ws committed and other information that might identify him regrding the crime. (Of course, he has the right to not speak or to have a lawyer present.)
A person who is caught in a combat situation who is not a member of a uniformed army simply does not have the same guarantees by treaty as a soldier in uniform. While I do not believe that torture can ever be successfully rationalized, the fact that an ununiformed combatant may be questioned more fully than a uniformed soldier does not mean that he has no rights. Your binary world view seems no different than Bush’s “with us or against us” philosophy and it is not appropriate to accuse other posters of holding positions that they have not expressed simply to support your binary views.
.
My irony meter just imploded:
You are in France…right? Home of the infamous French prisons? Really…folks in glass country should try and avoid throwing bricks mon ami. 
As for the OP I think that for once a specific definition of what exactly ‘torture’ IS would be in order…before we decide who is ‘evil’ or who should start sharpening their knives. This is something that is always danced around in these threads as no one can ever seem to make a solid definition of what exactly we are debating. Is torture inflicting disconfort? Is it only ‘torture’ if we take it to the point where life itself is endangered…or beyond? Is it ‘torture’ only if there is perminent damage to the subject? Is it ‘torture’ if its done only in an extralegal environment?
For myself I have no problem with some interrigation techniques including sleep depravation and some of the psychological techniques used. I would probably have no real problem with putting suspected terrorists (especially the high ranking ones that have been captured) through some fairly uncomfortable practices. Where would I draw the line? I’m not sure because I’ve never actually seen more than speculation as far as what exactly US personnel have done…and to whom. I have no doubts that some of the things done would go beyond the line I myself would draw…depending on who exactly was being put to the question and how effective the techniques used were in actually getting the information out of them. To me thats the main rub…that most of the really radical torture techniques used (I’m talking the ones that inflict a great deal of pain, or inflict pain over long periods of time, that cause perminent harm, or even death) don’t seem to be effective. Others however (combinations of sleep depravation and perhaps drugs, psychological techniques, etc) I’m not so sure they can be so easily dismissed…especially if they actually produce results and don’t cause perminent harm.
For all of you ‘torture is evil in all cases no matter what’ types what exactly do you propose as an alternative to interrogating suspected terrorists…or pure out and out terrorists caught red handed? Simply lock them up and make no attempt at all to interrogate them? Ask them nicely and if they refuse simply shrug and move on? Some of these folks, especially the high ranking ones have information that could be the key to taking down whole cells of terrorists…or in learning their plans and other vital operations information. Whats your alternative to the current methods used? Its really easy to sit back and bitch about something you don’t like (and REALLY easy to sit on your high horse and thump your chest while saying ‘I don’t like torture!’…as if the rest of us living in the real world DO like it), but if you don’t offer alternatives it kind of rings hollow. So, Evil et al…whats your alternative? What SHOULD we do IYHOs?
-XT
Can you show me where I advocated treating people worse than animals? If not, that’s a strawman!!!
Then you should be able to point out the post where I said they had “no rights”.
That’s an interesting opinion, but is not supported by the Geneva Convention.
Neither do I.
I said nothing about shooting spies w/o a trial, nor did I condone that famous episode in Vietnam. But let’s look at an example. Answer this question:
During a time of war, does the Geneva convention allow signatories to keep either POWs or spies incommunicado? Because, if it does, then doesn’t that delineate one class of people with fewer rights than another class?
…the “Reward” process is just as ineffective as torture, sleep depravation and food depravation in the current war on terror as run by the Americans. It would succeed only on the assumption that those locked up at places like Guantanemo Bay are guilty: yet after nearly four years of captivity, there is a large amount of evidence that many of those locked up have nothing to do with terrorism at all. (citations on linked post)
The assumption that you, and those that are trying to get information out of the people at Guantanemo are making is that those locked up are guilty. The haphazard method of detention used by American Forces, from offering bounty payments, to listening to people who have grudges against other people, means that that assumption is a poor one. What happens if you try to use rewards to coax information out of somebody who is innocent? They will either lie, meaning you will get false intelligence “noise”, that needs to be checked out, verified, and sometimes (sadly) actioned, or they will tell the truth: meaning that those who are innocent are labeled “troublemakers”, get the worst treatment, and don’t get “rewards”. The guilty may tell stories with enough shades of truth to get “rewards”.
The “caught on the battlefields” meme is a sham-and after four years of captivity tue US has not provided any evidence of guilt for those locked up at Guantanemo. So if you have any of this “proof”, that those locked up at Guantanemo Bay should be there under the designation of “unlawful combatents”, it would be lovely of you to share. I do not take my government or your government on “faith”, which is why we develop rules of law, accountability and safeguards in the first place.
The US has also alienated the international intelligence community with such screw ups like when a high profile prisoner Omar al-Faruq,-who was handed over to US authorities by the Indonesian government-escaped earlier this year, the Indonesian government only found out because of a court case months later.
Cite
The last four years have shown all the thing you don’t do when running a war on terror. You need international cooperation, and a combination of human and technical sources of information. You need less intelligence noise, not more. You need metrics not designed around how much actionable intelligence you can get in a day. The Bush Administration has hurt the war on terror, not helped it.
Thank-you, tom! I wanted to say exactly that, but I thought it would violate your earlier admonishment.
I’m on record as saying that I’m against our policy of indefinite detention, as we are doing in Gitmo. I think they all deserve some sort of swift tribunal to determine if they should be there in the first place. Once again, don’t confuse my position with Bush’s. I agree 100% with your post. Note that I’ve been careful in this thread to use Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as my example, not just any Tawfiq, Da’ud, or Habib who happens to be in Gitmo.