it is possible that the CIA would use methods amounting to torture in extracting information from this Al Qaeda suspect.
Would this be justified, and how would it be justified?
What effect would it have on the reputation of the USA?
Has this already been going on in Gitmo with other suspects?
My take on it is that it would not be justified because of international obligations, that if such treatment became public, then the US’s reputation would be further damaged, and that it probably has been going on in Gitmo.
I know that the defence lawyers for John Walker Lindh have suggested that torture was used to extract the ‘confession’ from him during his incarceration in Afghanistan.
Yep. Torture the hell out of him if it will save the lives of Americans. At this point I don’t really care about the “image” of America in these countries. They already hate us for reasons of their own, and torturing a known Al Qaeda leader should be almost expected.
Obviousely if they have tortured our servicemen they see torture as a viable means of extracting information from suspects. Why should they even find it suprising that we would do the same to protect our citizens?
You think they aint? We only need to look towards to the School of the America’s esteemed graduates to acknowledge that the US has extensive knowledge on the finer points of the art of torture.
Sleep deprivation, maybe a little brain washing, with a side of experimental drugs. Wallah! He’ll be getting teary eyed when he hears the Star Spangled Banner after they’re done with him.
On Fox and Friends, the FNC morning show, a substitute moderator Judge Napolitano said that Zubeida was in some unknown place, rather than Gitmo. Then he casually suggested the possibility that he had been grought to Egypt or some other country where torture is legal. Napolitano sounded as though he had no problem with the torture option.
I find this a difficult moral question. Fortunately I don’t have to deal with it. (Normally my most difficult moral dilemma is whether to fit data to a poisson distribution or a negative binomial.)
Try this question.
*Supose you KNEW that the information you could get by torturing Zubeida would save an innocent life?
Suppose it would save 10,000 innocent lives? *
Is there any point at which you would say that torture was morally justified?
Depends on how you define torture. I don’t think the CIA is planning to chop off the guy’s fingers a joint at a time or shove needles into his urethra. I have no problem with them kicking the shit out of the slimy SOB.
See, Pjen, what you fail to understand is that this guy helped orchestrate the mass murder of 3000 of my fellow citizens. He bombed our embassies in Africa and helped kill our boys in Somalia. The CIA can use physical coercion with my blessing if it will save American lives.
Really?
So by that token, war- which is a nasty and brutish business, killing off hundreds of thousands of those we would otherwise normally consider ‘civilians’, destroying economies, families, and countries- is not justified, even if the end is to remove Hitler and stop the Holocaust?
I’m flummoxed by your rational, John Corrado. Hitler is a perfect example of a tyrant that exploited the concept of the ends justifying the means, sir. Did he not invade both the Sudenland and Poland under the pretext that German nationals were being threatened?
Well, if you’re camparing the US campaign against al Quaeda to Hitler’s European conquests, your analogy is deeply flawed.
Hitler was an aggressor; we were victims.
If you need information from an uncooperative enemy, sometime you have to slap them around a bit.
WTC/Pentagon. 3000 dead.
The al-Qaeda scum have earned a bit of torture, I’d say.
Ya know, this is an absolute pain-in-the-ass question. As I have repeated ad nauseum in numerous other threads on numerous rights questions, it is a truism in our (liberal democratic) value system that our values and respect for human rights are literally more important than human life. For example, we let murderers go to kill again because we demand proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” of their guilt, or because we demand strict adherence to the protection of a suspect’s rights, including right to counsel, search warrants, etc. And, in my value system, this is a good thing.
When the issue of torture of Al-Qaedians was first raised on this board several months ago, I posited this POV as justification of my opposition to torture. And some bastard said “what if we caught the guy who planted a nuclear bomb in Chicago that was set to go off in the next 48 hours, and the only way to find it was to torture the guy?”
And I confessed that I would probably approve his torture - so my absolutist value system is in the crapper. (I still stand by my belief that any information thus uncovered could not be used against the guy in court - whoo hoo, I’m a civil libertarian :rolleyes: ) So, where do I stand? I don’t know. I’m still heartily opposed to torture simply because someone might have information, but beyond that, I’m up in the air.
You’ve got a point. I’m against the possibility of Walker-Lindh, or any other foot soldier type, being tortured. Zubeida’s case is a bit different. He’s high up in the chain of command in an organization that is intent on causing further harm. He also was in a position to trigger the sleeper cells that would carry those attacks out.
Ethically, with Zubeida, it’s a fairly easy argument. As you go further down the command structure and into the foot soldiers, the argument becomes weak.
Not that I would pass on the opportunity to give each and every one of them a swift kick in the nuts.
** Gobear ** of course I’m not comparing the US campaign to Hitler’s conquests. I understood John C.'s analogy to WWII to mean that the Allies war against Germany was an example of the ends justifying the means which is fallacious. The Allies
were responding to aggression not instigating it.
However, I do not want to potentially hijack this thread but I did want to clarify my point.
Ok, who said England, U.S.A, France, etc entered into the world war two to stop the Holocaust, you did not give a damm before the war started (jewish were pariahs even then). No one did anything to protect the Jews, they were lucky the war ended that quickly, a few more years and Hebrew would be a dead language
As long as the torture is focused at extracting information that would save the lives of our citizens, I’ve got absolutely no problem with it.
Should it be out of sadism or revenge, then it’s bullcrap.
Sure, we need to be cognizant of how others will perceive us and that goes both ways. I want them to know that (a) we don’t torture for pleasure and (b) we’ll do whatever it takes to protect our citizens.
I’ve never touched another man’s crotch but give me 10 minutes with Zubeida and I’ll make him sing like a drunken kareoke canary.
