We Know Torture is Bad, But We Just Can't Stop!

[mburbank]

WASHINGTON - A civil liberties group is charging that military interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, some posing as FBI agents, humiliated and abused detainees, including inserting lit cigarettes in their ears.

Releasing e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) said Monday one detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag and some were shackled hand and foot in fetal positions for 18 to 24 hours, forcing them to soil themselves.
-AP



You know what I bet? I bet it's just a few bad apples. I mean, I'm sure in a tightly supervised environment like Guantanamo nothing like this could ever happen as a matter of policy.

[mburbank]

The White House said on Tuesday it expected a full investigation of prisoner abuses in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after new FBI memos described detainees facing beatings and having lit cigarettes placed in their ears.


"If there is abuse that occurs, we expect it to be investigated fully and people to be held accountable, and measures taken to make sure that it doesn't happen again," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.


Know what's kind of funny about that? One of the most damning memos in this case dates back to June. So the investigation is kind of slow so far. Oh, and here's the other funny thing, haven't we already taken measures to make sure this thing doesn't happen again? I mean, from the last time we got caught torturing people?


But I bet it's just those damn bad apples. I mean, what else could explain widespread torture that continues even after it's become a national scandal? Those bad apples!

[kellychaos]

I like how we don't hear about this stuff on the regular news 'cause that would make me feel bad and and unpatriotic and ... well, you know ... I have to go to work and I probably wouldn't be very productive ... then they would hire an illegal alien to do my work because illegal aliens always do the jobs that americans don't want to do.

[mburbank]

I think I can promise you this will be on the news tonight.

This is going to be a large story. The memos obtained through the Freedom of Information act (Betting pool! How long before that act is remanded?) pretty much indicate that torture at Guantanamo was going on prior to the Ahbu Graibh mess, went on right through it and as of this summer was still going. In all likelihood, it's still going on.

It may be very difficult to prove that torture is our actual official policy, but I think it's going to be very easy to show that not stopping torture is policy.

I mean, who didn't get the message that getting caught torturing was the real no no. Get rid of them camera phones! Them is the culprit! Rummy is doing a excettling job his secratizage.

[kellychaos]

Security? As in the resting in the security that things like this are suppressed in the media until he's had a chance to put his spin on things? They used to be good at doing things like that ... at least on the small things. Now they're not so good as things are beginning to snowball.

[kahljorn]

You want the truth? YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH, I EAT BREAKFAST FIVE MILES AWAY FROM STUFF I CANT REMEMBER BUT WHATEVER IT WAS IT PROBABLY WANTS TO KILL JACK NICKKOLSON. Did you order a god damned code red?

CRYSTAL

[Preechr]

Are the media lazier than ever? yes...

Are we more than ever likely, policy wise, to embrace torture? sure...

#2 first: Thanks to the myriad attacks on anything that might give an advantage to America, pretty much anything a keeper might do to the kept can be classified as torture since the 70s. Reread your article with that in mind and it's not so outrageous. There's a reason throw in those bits about cigarettes and whatnot, and dare I point out the specifics aren't so credible sounding once stood up independently and looked upon incredulously?

There's a perfectly good and wholesome method for endorsing the use of torture up a point. If I've got your wife strapped to a time-bomb somewhere, I'm hoping you'd be willing to beat me up a bit to find out some details on the situation. As a society supposed to based in reason and morality, we should have defined the grey areas of such situations before now, but we've failed in that regard. What's needed is for folks to sit down and make some sensible guidelines for what and what is not past the line for what one might do to another in the search for information vital for the salvation of many innocent lives.

And, Kelly, yes, the major media stinks. There's a perfectly good alternative located in a window right there on your computer that's yet to be opened. I hope you will find a way to do so, because you seem very bright and willing to be treated honestly.

Here's the problem: You just have yet to figure out that if you want to know the real truth, it's up to you to find it.

[mburbank]

The problem with what you stated about torture is the same problem the death penalty has. Your version of how it would be used is rguable, reasonable, and historically never, ever, ever happens. It's a slippery slope.

How do you know for a fact this is the guy with the bomb? If you think he is, it probably makes sense to torture him and find out. I mean, do you want to take the chance?

And as long as your torturing the guy who might have the bomb, it would be just foolish as hell not to torture the guys you caught with him. And since the people you tortured sang a lot (never mind the information wasn't all that good) don't you have a moral obligation to torture anyone who might be in a position to know something about the bomb? And since all that torture is going on, what about lesser forms of torture? I mean, as long as the guy can walk afterwards, is it really torture? And if you only made him think he was going to die or that his wife was being raped in the next room or that there was a car battery hooked to his genitals, well if it isn't true it isn't torture. And if your boss is messing around with prisoners, doesn't that mean that as long as it's all in fun and you don't get caught you can mess around with thse guys? These are BAD guys, it's just frat stuff anyway, and ll that crap about who these aren't the right guys is bullshit, right? I mean, if they weren't real awful type bad guys they'd be allowed to have lawyers, right? Wouldn't the Red Cross make us stop if we weren't allowed to do this? And those guys we hid from the red cross, well the only reason we'd do that is if they were really, really evil, so whatever happens to those son of bitches, they're off the record anyway. And here's the thing, as yesterdays mess hall bombing shows, you have NO IDEA which of these guys is a dangrous enemy, so if you get them in custody and you don't torture them, and then a bomb goes off, what if they knew about it? What if, if you'd tortured them, you could have saved all those lives? Is that the kind fo risk you want to take? I mean, they started it, they're the enemy!


I'm not mcoking here. It's easy. It makes a certain kind of sense. There's only one reason to not do this kind of shit.

Because it's bad. Because it's important to try not to be bad. Because if we don't try not to be bad we're just two baboon troops trying to kill each other for food, except less dignfied.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

As a society supposed to based in reason and morality, we should have defined the grey areas of such situations before now, but we've failed in that regard. What's needed is for folks to sit down and make some sensible guidelines for what and what is not past the line for what one might do to another in the search for information vital for the salvation of many innocent lives.

Wasn't this called the Geneva Convention....? :confused

And, Kelly, yes, the major media stinks. There's a perfectly good alternative located in a window right there on your computer that's yet to be opened. I hope you will find a way to do so, because you seem very bright and willing to be treated honestly.

Here's the problem: You just have yet to figure out that if you want to know the real truth, it's up to you to find it.

Er, pardon me for making a Preechr here and drawing us further off topic, but I think there's a real danger in simply "opening a computer window" to get your information. Is it really a coincidence that people seem to be getting more and more partisan in the age of internet pandering punditry....? You, Preech, can read the Weekly Standard and Newsmax.com all day long if it pleased you, and I could merely read Common Dreams or Media Matters all day. We're certainly finding "alternative" outlets, but what are we really finding? I think most recent studies have in fact shown that people are simply reading to feel right, not necessarily reading to feel enlightened.

I dunno, maybe there's something to be said for the watered down, abstract nightly news with Brian Willams. :/

[kellychaos]

The media has to deal with the information that is given to them by the press secretary (or whatever they choose to name their representative) that the agency in question chooses to throw their way if they want to get even the tiniest morsel of information in the future. People tend to read the things with the spin that already matches their beliefs ... me included, although I try to get a balanced account, I find that it is a weakness of mine.

[sspadowsky]

From www.thememoryblog.org:

CIA Torture Jet Revealed

From the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27826-2004Dec26.html?sub=AR):

The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.

The plane's owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each one of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security number and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.

Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories - just the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former intelligence officials, that the C.I.A. uses to conceal involvement in clandestine operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.

The C.I.A. calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive's Gulfstream helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide. ...

The story of the Gulfstream V offers a rare glimpse into the C.I.A.'s secret operations, a world that current and former C.I.A. officers said should not have been so easy to document.

Not only have the plane's movements been tracked around the world, but the on-paper officers of Premier Executive Transport Services are also connected to a larger roster of false identities.

[mburbank]

Yeah, I've read about this few times now, but the story making it to the Washington Post pretty much lets you know it's been fully vetted.

It syncs up perfectly with the Red Cross reports that we've disapeared a number of suspects.

I think it's sort of 'qauint' that the person who laid the legal groundwork for this circumvention of the Geneva convention is W's nominee for Attorney General. Will a single Democratic confressman have the sack to bring this up? Or are we just going to become a nation that tortures it's captives without any sort of official resistance.

"The USA! We're more judicous in our use of torture than a number of othr nations!"

[Preechr]

You can trust Uncle Sam to torture folks fairly and judiciously, just as you can trust him to only invade those countries that truly deserve it.

Seriously, what's one person getting tortured compared to thousands being mutilated and killed? If we can accept the latter even in the case of innocents can outrage at torture of the possibly ignorant or uninvolved be expressed with a straight face?

The torture argument is just an extension of the larger argument of war.

[Preechr]

http://www.reason.com/links/links122704.shtml

[MetalMilitia]

You can trust Uncle Sam to torture folks fairly and judiciously, just as you can trust him to only invade those countries that truly deserve it.

Seriously, what's one person getting tortured compared to thousands being mutilated and killed? If we can accept the latter even in the case of innocents can outrage at torture of the possibly ignorant or uninvolved be expressed with a straight face?

The torture argument is just an extension of the larger argument of war.

Ugg, i dont think thats the point. Countries like the USA are supposed to be civilised and not into all this torture stuff.
If torture is ok then why not just execute known terrorists with no trial?
Afterall its only a few 'evil' people getting killed to potentially save alot of others?

[mburbank]

Preech has a wider point (I think) and it's an excellent one. It's all about the arbitrary lines societies draw.

Why are cluster bombs and land mines (which we know kill innocents) acceptable to us and torture is not?

Why is war acceptable to us at all, since it's always about wholesale slaughter?

Why is a car bomb terror and a bomb dropped from an airplane not terror?

There are two things we usually make a claim to taking into account, ie. civillians as opposed to soldiers and Hot blood battlefield situations as opposed to cold blood interrogations.

I think if anyone looks closely at this they'll see there's way more jutsification than meat here.

I think the ONLY rubric we should be using is what's unavoidable and what's avoidable. But people are either too savage for that or too afraid that they'll get killed while they're mulling it over.

AND as flip as my thread title was, I think people like to torture other people. I think there's a hard wired genetic tendency (not in everyone, but far and away the norm) to desire to control other people. Torture is just the far end of that spectrum.