The Torture Question
POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Sunday, October 30, 2005 21:30
VIEWED: 10585
PAGE 8 of 16
Quote:I'm always amazed by your grasp the emotional/ ethical/ zeitgeist flow. I'm going to have to cite Rue: "What I know is by the grace of others."
They create these grand shaping myths about good and evil, a War on Terror, a diabolical enemy bent on destroying us; and then compartmentalize it to the point that no one in the administration has any responsibility for anything
Please don't think they give a shit.
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I've just spent the last hour or so reading through all the posts under this topic and a lot of very interesting comments have been made.
I haven't seen the programme mentioned and I don't know enough about the Abu Ghraib situation to give intelligent comment but my own opinions...
I think an important question is 'what is the aim of torture'? You'd see old war movies and where torture was involved it was a 'tell us what we want to know' situation. I don't think that is necessarily the case nowadays - power and humiliation are key. Break the person and use any means necessary and more and more the psychological is the way to go.
There was an excellent programme on the BBC a year or so ago about a group of volunteers (normal members of the public) agreed to go through the training of the SAS (I think? Could have been army) for captured situations.
They were subjected to sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, bodily 'discomfort' (being made to kneel for hours on end or having static played loudly into the space they were in.
The men and women involved were then questioned but the questions often made no sense - reminded me of the 'is it safe?' scene with Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier.
Some broke very quickly, some became quite physically ill - hypothermia etc. and then the mental angle broke most of the rest.
It was very scary to me that soldiers would be trained like this to prepare them for the possible occurrence of this type of situation. So, these soldiers go to war and come back safely and their training does not come into play - have they therefore been tortured by their own under the auspices of 'training' of was it valid training without the torture aspect.
I think as a global society we have become much less caring for human suffering - and by that I mean that we see so much of it that I really do think that we are being desensitised and whose fault is that - would the media please stand up.
I have seen scenes of people suffering brought to me by the media that I never want to be submitted to again. I have heard and read stories of torture and suffering that I don't want to see again. And not for the reasons you are probably thinking of - no, I don't want to get to a point where I accept it as part of what the world takes part in. I want to be sure that I feel disgusted and sickened when I hear that and American soldier has tortured and humiliated a pow. If it didn't happen in the first place that would be better but I think that is an unrealistic thought.
People are being tortured all around us every day - physical abuse, sexual abuse, mental abuse. I heard a story in the news in the last week of a girl being attacked and dragged down a lane by a group of animals who then raped her. She lost consciousness after the 2nd man raped her so she doesn't know how many times it happened. When she woke up she was alone and naturally in a bad state. She made her way back to the road and caught the attention of a man who took her back to his house, where guess what, he raped her and threw her back out again.
That was torture on his part and not just an assault. Now if you weren't broken before you're sure as hell going to be broken after that.
I know I'm ranting now and it's late and there is so much more I want to say about this topic but...
I fear greatly for how humanity is falling deeper and deeper into 'reaverdom'. I know some of it was there before we had massive media output but we're broadcasting the evil operations manual to those we don't want seeing it all the time now and I certainly feel that we're creating more torturous monsters than we need to have.
God help us all...
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Actually Geezer, the statement stands on its own.
Actually, it doesn't.
My comment was in response to HKCavalier's statement "The point is that Rummy wants these people tortured." I don't think it's Rummy wanted people tortured at all. Rummy wanted intel. He got opinions from administration lawyers on what coercion was permissible to apply. He also got opinions on the status of the detainees as lawful combatants. He based guidelines on that information.
And here's the infamous "torture guidelines" memo, showing what he approved. Ohh. Finger poking. The bastard!
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.12.02.pdf
I have a hard time seeing these as causing "Severe physical or mental pain and suffering".
Again and again. People who exceeded these guidelines were proscecuted for abusing prisoners.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Ahhh! Politics!
My other fave topic after Joss shows!
I don't have time to watch this program right now, so I'll try to catch it now, but for the moment I want to ignorantly post on this thread.
I assume that there is a "no sparring" rule here, or I would hope so, so we can all be civil, like the Senate used to be and the House probably never was.
So first a disclaimer. I'm a conservative, and I can't stand george w. bush. I really can't stand him.
So for all the Bushies out there who I am bound to offend many times, My apologies in advance. The fact that I utterly despise the man has nothing to do with you and I didn't mean it personal.
For all the liberals out there, I really will try not to get into any arguments, I figure the basic philosophical differences we'll have will be "what's best for America" and our real opponents are not one another, but rather all those cretins who really don't care about what's best for America at all. (here I mean PNAC and the Bushes and the Clintons - and my apologies to any Clinton supporters, read my above Bush disclaimer and substitute Clinton in there)
Okay, disclaimers out of the way, some political comments:
I wanted to post this because the subject is torture, which naturally as a member of the human race, I am opposed to. Also because I know something that a lot of people don't because they werent' webcrawling enough at the time, but some of you will have seen this before.
I will find the sources later if someone wants, but just the general idea of the story goes like this:
Right after Abu Grhaib broke, another less sensational story broke more quietly, and no one seemed to notice. It was about allied forces US, UK, torturing people OUTSIDE of Abu Ghraib.
The purpose of this torture was essentially, obstensively, to determine if someone knew anything. If they did, they'd be taken in to be interrogated.
But worse than that, it was for fun. Good old racist nazi sadistic child murdering fun. There were quotes by these guys that said things like, and I'm going to use the spoilers here because there might be kids reading this, so fair warning.
Select to view spoiler:
"We pick up kids maybe one every couple of hours, we've been doing it for months. usualy 14 or 15, we just like to kick them around. We know they probably didn't do nothing, but we got a kick out it. We'd knock their teeth out, cut their fingers off, shoot their dicks off with a shotgun..."
that sort of thing. That's probably not an exact quote but it's close enough. It goes on...
"After a while, we always get afraid he's going to die on us so we just drive around and chuck him out the back of the truck and pick up another one. We don't know if they live or die."
Then in case that was just a rumor, some iraqis had taken lots of pictures I found on another website that backed up this story.
All of which is leading me to my main point re: this ain't torture.
The idea that what we did is offensive to the muslim religion, and that's why it was so bad - is pure spin. This wasn't the problem. The problem was we were doing real concentration camp nazi torture, and that story was breaking.
So, we intentionally leaked the lynddie england story, so that we could say, oh no, we offended muslims. Iraqis are no more muslim than new yorkers are jewish, they had an incredibly secular society, which means their values were really pretty much what our values are. There's no great gap there. Sure, it would be offensive if a bunch of white cops stacked up black people naked and put them on leashes, of course, there would be riots. But there wouldn't be a civil war. Now if white cops in new york started doing to black children the sort of thing described in thar spoiler box, then we'd have a civil war.
Just thought I'd throw that out there so people who weren't inclined to before can start thinking outside the box on what we might've done that could be described as torture. I think we're talking in the hundred or thousands at least, and possibly the tens of thousands here in
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BTW, I don't accept that Rummy wanted intel, that's not the supposed combat value of torture. it's not why the nazi's did it. Dehumanizing and hence demoralizing the enemy, in this case, arabs. Or muslims. In theory, if they are treated like animals, they will begin to accept their role as animals, and it gets them away from the negotiating table.
I think Rummy is essentially evil. The above philosophy is pure evil. Like anyone who is evil, Rummy deeply believes that he is good. If you read some of the PNAC dribble from way back, they're all on about the greater good, they are believers. Sure they steal oil, but stealing oil is only a means to an end. Look at JEB and the healthcare fraud, which he supposedly lifted $1B from. He didn't keep it, he used it to fund terrorism in latin america. Because like Rummy and the other members of PNAC, JEB is a believer.
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Quote:A definition of torture that spans all the things that cause a prisoner or detainee discomfort is a useless one, in my opinion. If it is as likely to apply to pulling fingernails out as breaking wind in the presence of a detainee, then it completely fails. Although imprisonment and interrogation are certainly stressful to the detainee, it is not necessarily torture. Sleep deprivation, loud noises, and defacing religious relics are indeed all designed to break down the will of a detainee, but they are not torture. Interrogation and torture both share common goals, but there is a noted difference in the severity and effectiveness. Torture is something different. Lumping torture and interrogation together is misguided, even the website that you cited noted this:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
I have agreed with you before that I could live with the "sticks and stones" standard that some sort of physical impact is required to define torture ("Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me."). After all, people have to assume responsibility at some point for choosing to feel pain when pain is not physically administered.
After thinking about it for several days, I have come to change my mind. The "sticks and stones" standard does not take into account the helplessless of being physically imprisoned to begin with.
Out in the real world, if someone infuriates me on purpose, I can physically remove my self from the offensive situation. I can complain to my friends for emotional support, and file grievances with authorities for hope of justice. A prisoner has none of those recourses. He must endure.
“Torture splinters [an individual’s psychological support system] by sheer force, using both psychological design and the impact of massive unavoidable sustained physical pain.”
Torture differs from interrogation in that it is typically more then psychological, and indeed, the defining aspect of torture that distinguishes it from interrogation is usually the application of severe prolonged physical pain.
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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Dreamtrove,
There was an interrogator in the program who talked about the tactics used on record, which included sodomy and keeping someone refridgerated in hypothermia just this side of death. He then said that doesn't touch on all the stuff that goes on off the record, where there are no cameras, in shipping containers, alleys, and in people's homes.
Evil governments throughout history have always fostered a climate of dehumanization and thuggery, then let loose angry, armed recruits. Now we've become one of them.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky 
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Can'tTakeTheSky
I really agree.
I think Sen. McCain made an interesting point also on this, which is when you get some yahoo on top, say Rummy, saying it's okay to call it an interrogation technique if you torture someone, then you get a standard after which a pattern of behavior will be modelled where some yahoo at the bottom is
Select to view spoiler:
shoving a shotgun up some 14yos ass to see if his eyes fall out if you blow his brains out from below.
Select to view spoiler:
Unfortunate for the American image and perhaps the war effort, but I feel perhaps fortunately for American in a long term way, many of the Iraqis had cameras.
I think what we have here is an old evil, not a new one. I urge everyone, if they haven't done so, visit newamericancentury.org, and look up the backgrounds of people like wolfowitz, perle, rove, look them up on wikipedia.org, and there will unravel a lot of shocking truths about our unelected leaders.
I also would send a warning to the people on the other side of the aisle, these people aren't just infiltrating the GOP, they've infiltrated the democrats as well.
Ending evil govt. will require that we over here all make sure that a real republican is elected in a primary, and that the dems make sure a real democrat is the winner of the dem primary. I would love for this to return to a dispute over policy issue, instead of a fight against evil, but fight against evil is what we have now.
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Quote:Agreed. I'm saying things that are not severe here on the outside can become severe when you're trapped with nowhere to go, when they're repetitive, and when they are used with other tactics that have already weakened your ability to cope.
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Interrogation and torture both share common goals, but there is a noted difference in the severity and effectiveness.
It's one thing to have your holy book degraded in a police precinct. It is another in a prison. It is still another in prison after being denied sleep. And after being humiliated. After being forced to stand in awkward positions. After being beaten. And so on.
Quote:Can't Take My Gorram Sky
What is torture?
The Convention against Torture defines torture 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…." (Art. 1). It may be "inflicted by or at the instigation of or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
The prohibition against torture under international law applies to many measures—e.g. beating on the soles of the feet; electric shock applied to genitals and nipples; rape; near drowning through submersion in water; near suffocation by plastic bags tied around the head; burning; whipping; needles inserted under fingernails; mutilation; hanging by feet or hands for prolonged periods.
International law also prohibits mistreatment that does not meet the definition of torture, either because less severe physical or mental pain is inflicted, or because the necessary purpose of the ill-treatment is not present. It affirms the right of every person not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Examples of such prohibited mistreatment include being forced to stand spread eagled against the wall; being subjected to bright lights or blindfolding; being subjected to continuous loud noise; being deprived of sleep, food or drink; being subjected to forced constant standing or crouching; or violent shaking. In essence, any form of physical treatment used to intimidate, coerce or "break" a person during an interrogation constitutes prohibited ill-treatment. If these practices are intense enough, prolonged in duration, or combined with other measures that result in severe pain or suffering, they can qualify as torture.
The prohibition against torture as well as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is not limited to acts causing physical pain or injury. It includes acts that cause mental suffering—e.g. through threats against family or loved ones. As the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized, "coercion can be mental as well as physical…the blood of the accused is not the only hallmark of an unconstitutional inquisition" Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 448, (1966) citing Blackburn v. State of Alabama, 361 U.S. 199 (1960). As discussed below, the use of mind-altering drugs to compel a person to provide information would at least amount to inhuman or degrading treatment under the Convention against Torture.
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/11/TortureQandA.htm#What
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