Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Do you or do you not?
 

While that stat is most likely accurate, I'd be pretty surprised if we were interrogating folks who had no real way of knowing anything.

I'm talking out my ass on that one, but it would seem reasonable.

Sometimes the US military isn't always completely reasonable.

Still, the NY Times did that big article decrying some of the techniques that were used to interrogate individuals that helped plan 9/11. Yep, we made life pretty miserable for them.

They killed 3000 people.

They have a long way to go before there's any kind of justice -- is justice even possible for these people?

Again, where was the outrage when US soldiers were tortured, killed and had their mutilated bodies put on display?

I don't understand the corelation there, KT. But it's late, I'll take another look tomorrow and see if it makes more sense to me.

Sorry.

Local Detroit News channel 4 (NBC affiliate) just reported on their 11:00 pm news tonight that a man who lives in the US legally was arrested while visiting family in Iraq and abused in numerous ways (including being sodomized with a stick). He ended up released and is back at home in Dearborn, MI.

They haven't posted the story on the net yet, once they do, I will edit to add a link to the story.

If we believe in due process, then we have to believe in it all the time.

Dee

I will use this time to shoot my mouth off about a subject I know nothing, as is my right and duty as an American. Just Kidding. I'm not going to say anything stupid. Vote Federalist.

ktsnake-I'm talking out my ass on that one, but it would seem reasonable.

You're in pretty good company! ;) :D

I am somehow out of the loop..
 

What is the ???

I guess my dissertation really has started ruling my life...
Silver

I don't do anything unconditionally. I don't condemn anything unconditionally so that in the future someone can come and say oh but hey torture is torture. In the Filipinies, torture was used over 40 days to secure information on an attack on the pope. Throughout the world, there are many ticking bomb situations where it is necessary to extract information to save many lives. So yes, I emphatically support torture in that context.

However, I do not support torture for the sake of torture and believe that there should be steps taken to prevent that. I do not know the full case of Abu Gharib and neither do most of you. You do not know what happened beyond those pictures, you do not know what crimes (if any) the prisoners had committed, or anything further. I believe in Dershowitz's idea that there should be separations and balances built in where acts like this would be prevented but stress can be applied to prisoners to extract information and save lives.

And there is no comparison between Abu Gharib or Berg's case. None. One wasn't the result of the other to begin with. Additionally, Berg not only is dead but died a brutal death. By posting both in the same post you have created an idea of "one and the same". That was foolish and there was absolutely no reason for it.

-Rudey

So, do you or do you not condemn the torture in Abu Gharib?

This isn't about the torture of Abu Gharib, it is about the decimation of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis by Hussein, the gassing and the murder by Hussein, and about the Hussein-supporting terrorists who mutilate American bodies.

-Rudey
--I can play this game better than you

Do you or do you not condemn the Abu Gharib tortures? It is a simple question. I did not ask about Hussein. I ask two specific questions. You answered the second one, which you condemn the Berg's murder. But you did not answer the first question.

So to reiterate, do you or do you not condemn the Abu Gharib tortures?

Actually it does have to do with the question. I approve of torture and stress to save lives. That picture shows a man who might have been saved had an informant talked. Cases of stress and torture are widely documented as having prior success (see my post about the pope). So what did you not notice about that?

As for Abu Gharib, I and nobody else knows everything that has happened yet nor the circumstances behind any of it. Since I support torture in some cases, and since I don't know the details of Abu Gharib, I cannot answer your question. That is the best answer.

As for the other question you tried to link up to Abu Gharib, it was clearly designed to have people create that artificial link.

-Rudey

Salon.com (liberal, yes, but it raises some interesting points) had a recent interview with a former CIA agent who worked there until 1998 and said that anyone caught using torture as a device to get information would have been immediately dismissed while he was working there. Of course he can't say for certain, but he speculated that torture only became acceptable after 9/11.

I'm wondering why an action that the CIA shied away from for years would suddenly become acceptable?

After all, experience has shown that torture isn't an effective information-getting device because those being tortured will tell you what you want to hear rather than the truth, just so that their suffering will end. And when you take into account that statistic that said 70 percent of those in that jail could easily have no knowledge of what you want to know -- well, you'd be getting a lot of irrelevant information and false leads.

I don't support torture as a technique the US should be using, it's that simple.

And Tom, Iraqis didn't kill Nick Berg. To the best of my recollection, it was a Jordanian that did.

Anyway, I agree with most of the people in this thread when I say that I don't find either action acceptable.

A) Experience has shown that torture is an effective information-getting device since one case alone I've cited twice.

B) What statistic??

C) Even if 70% of those in jail have no knowledge, stress isn't applied to everyone and anyone. And were it applied to 100, where 50 people might know, and one person tells you that there is a suicide murderer attacking a building filled with people, then maybe 300+ people might live.

-Rudey

Kind of off topic, but a comment from an ordinary American today said you could get better intelligence from a weary, humiliated, psychologically unsettled terrorist than you could from a satiated, well rested terrorist.

Hmmmm-who da thunk it!:rolleyes:

Then here's a simple answer for you, if you want to wax sophist for a moment:

NO.

I don't unilaterally condemn it.


























Sorry, but in a wartime environment, the rules shift. History has proven time and again that he who breaks the rules takes a decisive advantage - so why restrict ourselves to some sort of generation-A morality, when we're in battle with an enemy who clearly doesn't give a damn?

Now - this obviously ignores the larger questions of the validity of war, as well as the intelligence of using our supposed moral highground as a selling point to Iraqis . . . but those are separate issues.