What are you speechless about?
Also this isn't the first time you were speechless.
[External Link]
We have ways of making you talk, Damian.
Unfortunately, we don't have ways of making people *think*. On the other hand, knowing that torture awaits our enemies will generate some *fear*, and the treatment itself does work to generate vital information.
There's this urban myth that torture interrogation techniques don't work. One wonders where that nonsense got started.
Lee... Care to expand on that? Who, specifically and corrupt how?
Posted at 2005-11-30 05:52:49 [PermaLink]So how many people have to die so that we may make ourselves feels better by not being beastly to terrorists? Where will the redefinition of torture end? 100, 1000 or is it 1 mil?
Our enemies must be pissing themselves with laughter at this one.
We are better than the terrorists.
I do not believe there is any info we can get from the minions.
It's like the mafia. Orders from guys who get orders from guys who get orders from guys who get orders and so on.
We need to not focus on the little soldiers and go get the "Dons." Those are the people we should interrogate with no remorse.
With all due respect, the fact that they do it to our guys without blinking an eye is no reason to lose our morality.
We can take all the minions out of the fight without losing our compass.
Send them to the Aleutian Islands. I think it's cold there this time of year.
"With all due respect, the fact that they do it to our guys without blinking an eye is no reason to lose our morality."
I agree. The question isn't whether torture can work in some circumstances. It's whether torture is immoral. It's whether sinking to the level of a terrorist is an appropriate way to fight one.
Terrorists will always use the West's freedoms and higher standards against us. That's just the nature of the beast. But we shouldn't be prepared to sacrifice what we stand for in order to defend ourselves.
Those who oppose torture in all circumstances should at least admit that they're willing to sacrifice any number of lives in defence of this principle.
I think a good example of justified torture is the "Dirty Harry" one. A psycho killer has a girl buried alive somewhere. Harry finds him, but not her. Harry blasts the guy's leg as he's fleeing. The guy just laughs as he's lying there, saying he won't tell Harry a thing. Harry grinds the gunshot wound with his foot until the creep spills the beans.
This is the "ticking time bomb" defence of torture, and, as I said, I think those who reject it must accept that their rejection might condemn someone to death. If you support lethal force in a hostage situation that goes bad, why would you reject non-lethal force in what amounts to the same thing?
Remember too that even a society that nominally rejects torture, such as Canada, can be guilty of it in non-ticking-time-bomb circumstances, as those neo-Nazi goons calling themselves soldiers in Somalia proved. So I'd submit that the slippery-slope argument against torture is an insufficient one.
"It's whether sinking to the level of a terrorist is an appropriate way to fight one."
Sari, with due respect, why stop then at torture? Killing foreign combatants is even worse, using THAT standard. So let's load our ammo with sugar. Let's bomb gun installations with candies.
It IS NOT about whether one "sinks to" that level. In a struggle, one has no choices but to win or to lose. One can ONLY fight a terrorist with evil acts, when it comes to that. It sucks. Therefor, reality sucks from time to time. The fact of torture, though, does not mean that we treat all of our captives the way THEY had treated Nick Berg.
"I know that you have suffered, lad/
But suffer this awhile:/
Whatever makes a soldier sad/
Will make a killer smile/"
... Leonard Cohen
Ticking time bomb.
This is the only real time use for torture. The Dirty Harry analogy is a great one and is germaine to the whole torture debate.
But the slippery slope is whether or not the guys we catch have any knowledge at all of the slippery slope.
If we catch one of the top guys who we know is on the inside of AL Qaeda or any other terrorist group dealings, then yes the Dirty Harry approach is not only the best approach but the one which will save the most lives.
I have to put the shoe on the other foot. Being that I am Jew and (hypothetically) the yogurt hits the fan for Jews in the US and some kind of Jewish conspiracy is found and I am taken to jail because I am Jew, and I get tortured for info about said conspiracy... what will be the result?
AN admission that I am Jewish and I know a lot of Jews in Houston? And maybe I know the name of the Director of the Jewish Community Center?
Who doesn't?
Is this info that cannot be taken off of the website or from simple general knowledge?
It's a difficult analogy and there is no moral comparison but I have to ask the question.
What about people from Zimbabwe? Or what about Mongolians? Or maybe the Roma Gypsies?
Where do we draw the line?
Andrew Ian Dodge
"So how many people have to die so that we may make ourselves feels better by not being beastly to terrorists?"
When there are people like this:
[External Link]
"Sir Paul's animal crackers (The Times)"
"Sir Paul and Lady Heather are so exercised by the plight of some cats and dogs that they will now refuse to travel to China, and are demanding a worldwide boycott of Chinese goods.
As for the imprisonment and judicial murder of thousands of dissident human beings, not a pip from either of them."
then there is no point in putting such a question
to the masses.
Sleep deprivation works; trust me.
It hardly qualifies as torture, in fact, calling it that muddies the waters in examining potentially crippling or lethal torture.
I agree with DaninVan. Sleep deprivation is not torture. It is unpleasant, and that is it.
In fact, I'd venture that unless you are seriously injured (ie, requiring several days to recover), you haven't been tortured. Stuff like breaking fingers, burning skin, electrical shocks, etc. Actual physical harm. A slap in the face is not torture, nor is messing with someone's mind (ie, making them believe that they are unclean before Allah).
As far as using actual torture (as I described above), I don't like it, and if it is done, they better have a darn good reason for doing it. A reason that the court marshal board is willing to accept as justifying torture. Otherwise, interogate away.
Sleep deprivation works; trust me.
It hardly qualifies as torture, in fact, calling it that muddies the waters in examining potentially crippling or lethal torture.
Exactly you need to find out what someone is refering to when they say torture. It varies widely that is for sure. There are people that think the every-day treatment of people at Gitmo is torture.
Cynic yes I saw that...Sir Paul is such a knob. Wonder if there is any link with the pro-Animal/anti-human bollocks he has been peddling and the fact he has not made any decent music since Wings.
We are so pathetically weak. We take criticism from the opposition, hardly raising an objection. We're in such a rush to introspection that we fail to nail them to the cross ( ;) )for THEIR far greater abuses.
From DhimmiWatch, today:
[External Link]