INTENSITY²
Politics, Mature and taboo => Political Pundits => Topic started by: Peter on April 05, 2008, 04:28:25 PM
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWeL_7aXFc8
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.
"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said. The bill he rejected provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and has the interrogation requirement as one provision. It cleared the House in December and the Senate last month.
"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.
Supporters of the legislation say it would preserve the United States' ability to collect critical intelligence while also providing a much-needed boost to country's moral standing abroad.
"Torture is a black mark against the United States," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "We will not stop until [the ban] becomes law."
The bill would limit CIA interrogators to the 19 techniques allowed for use by military questioners. The Army field manual in 2006 banned using methods such as waterboarding or sensory deprivation on uncooperative prisoners.
Bush said the CIA must retain use of "specialized interrogation procedures" that the military doesn't need. The military methods are designed for questioning "lawful combatants captured on the battlefield," while intelligence professionals are dealing with "hardened terrorists" who have been trained to resist the techniques in the Army manual, the president said.
"We created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland," Bush said. "If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior al Qaeda terrorists, and that could cost American lives."
The legislation's backers say the military's approved methods are sufficient to any need.
Those 19 interrogation techniques to which the bill would have restricted CIA personnel include the "good cop/bad cop" routine, making prisoners think they are in another country's custody and separating a prisoner from others for up to 30 days.
Among the techniques the field manual prohibits are hooding prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes, stripping them naked, forcing them to perform or mimic sexual acts, or beating, electrocuting, burning or otherwise physically hurting them.
They may not be subjected to hypothermia or mock executions. It does not allow food, water and medical treatment to be withheld. Dogs may not be used in any aspect of interrogation.
But waterboarding is the most high-profile and controversial of the interrogation methods in question.
It involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to simulate and create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years to the Spanish Inquisition and is condemned by nations around the world and human rights organizations as torture.
Some argue it must be banned because, if torture, it is illegal under international and U.S. law. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 includes a provision barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for all detainees in U.S. custody, including CIA prisoners, and many believe that covers waterboarding.
Others say that, even if legal, there are practical arguments against waterboarding: that its use would undermine the U.S. when arguing overseas for human rights and on other moral issues and would place Americans at greater risk of being tortured when captured.
"President Bush's veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said in a statement Friday. "Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world."
He noted that the Army field manual contends that harsh interrogation is a "poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the (interrogator) wants to hear."
The U.S. military specifically prohibited waterboarding in 2006. The CIA also prohibited the practice in 2006, and says it has not been used since three prisoners encountered it in 2003.
But while some Bush administration officials have questioned the current legality of waterboarding, the administration has refused to rule definitively on whether it is torture. Bush has said many times that his administration does not torture.
The White House says waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods potentially available to the CIA. Its use would have to be approved, on a case-by-case basis, by the president after consultation with the attorney general and the intelligence community. Among the acceptable situations for approving it could be belief of imminent attack, according to the White House.
"Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," Bush said.
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
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Americans, especially Catholics, approve of torture
By TOM CARNEY
Is the American public apathetic about charges its government uses and sponsors torture in its fight against terrorism?
Not apathetic, according to surveys. Fact is, a majority of Americans actually approve of the use of torture under some circumstances. What’s more, according to one survey, Catholics approve of its use by a wider margin than the general public.
“This may be a reaction to 9/11, the horrible loss of life and the atrocities of those acting in the name of Islam,†says Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., member of the bishops’ Committee on International Policy. “Some people feel the situation is out of control. They feel a vulnerability and a temptation to respond in kind. We have to resist that.â€
A survey by the Pew Research Center in October showed that 15 percent of Americans believe torture is “often†justified, and another 31 percent believe it is “sometimes†justified. Add to that another 17 percent who said it is “rarely†justified, and you have two out of three Americans justifying torture under certain circumstances. Only 32 percent said it is “never†justified, while another 5 percent didn’t know or refused to answer.
But the portion of Catholics who justify torture is even higher, according to the survey. Twenty-one percent of Catholics surveyed said it is “often†justified and 35 percent said it is “sometimes†justified. Another 16 percent said it is “rarely†justified, meaning that nearly three of four Catholics justify it under some circumstances. Four percent of Catholics “didn’t know†or refused to answer and only 26 percent said it is “never†justified, which is the official teaching of the church.
Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew center, said these results mirror those of similar surveys.
That could be why Bush administration officials have been emboldened to use terms like “torture lite,†referring to abuse that does not result in organ failure or death, and why international and humanitarian organizations have been outspoken about American and American-sponsored torture.
A United Nations statement last year said that inmates at the four-year-old Guantánamo Bay detention center were deprived of legal assistance and information and living in conditions of detention that “amount to inhuman and degrading treatment.â€
In February, five investigators of the United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights concluded an 18-month study and recommended that the detention center at Guantánamo Bay be closed immediately.
Torture, according to the International Convention against Torture of 1984, “means 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, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person.â€
The United Nations has not been alone in charging the United States with torture. Amnesty International has complained of the “use of torture and ill-treatment against prisoners†at Guantánamo, citing the testimony of former prisoners. And it has detailed American-sponsored torture by Iraqi military brigades.
In February the American-based organization, Human Rights First -- formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights -- charged the U.S. government with the deaths of 100 detainees during “the global war on terror.â€
A New York Times article, also in February, said the American military’s detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, operates in “rigorous secrecy,†refusing to name, let alone bring charges against, its 500 or so prisoners. The facility may not be photographed, even from a distance. It is believed to be keeping prisoners that normally would have been sent to Guantánamo were it not for the recent critical publicity.
The article said an Army investigation discovered two practices -- since reportedly halted -- that resulted in at least two deaths at Bagram. One was the chaining of prisoners by the arms to the ceilings of their cells. The other was the use of knee strikes to the legs of disobedient prisoners by guards. Other practices, since phased out, included use of barking dogs to frighten new prisoners and handcuffing of prisoners to cell doors to punish them for talking.
“It was like a cage,†one former prisoner told the Times, likening it to the animal cages he had seen at the zoo in Karachi, Pakistan.
Besides conducting torture and sponsoring it, the American government has been accused of using “rendition,†sending suspects to another country without regard for the torture that might await them there.
While some in the Bush administration have appeared to support limited uses of prisoner abuse, Congress has been lukewarm in opposing it, with some exceptions.
“At Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq, at Guantánamo, and in Afghanistan, allegations and evidence of detainee abuse have damaged the standing of the United States in the world,†said a statement by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in December.
She was speaking after the House passed the Murtha motion, 303 to 122, supporting the prohibition of torture. The motion, sponsored by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was identical to an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that passed the Senate overwhelmingly in October.
“Our struggle with the forces of international terrorism is as much a battle of ideas as a battle of arms,†Pelosi said. “We weaken ourselves when we compromise our ideals. Standing against torture helps define the differences between the United States and those who offer no message other than hatred and violence.â€
On the other hand, the House International Relations Committee rejected in February a resolution introduced by Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., that would have required the Bush administration to provide information on the people who have been subjected to rendition.
Murtha, Pelosi and Markey are Catholic, as is U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has defended America’s treatment of prisoners. This month Gonzales denied the U.S. government engages in torture or ill-treatment of terror suspects as well as the use of rendition.
“The United States has always been and remains a great defender of human rights and rule of law,†he said. “I regret that there has been concern or confusion about our commitment to the rule of law.â€
That “concern or confusion†appears to be widespread, extending to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic peace organizations.
Bishop Ricard says Catholics should be concerned about charges of torture because “it’s more about us and our values as Catholics and Americans†than anything else.
Ricard, and Stephen Kolecchi, director of the bishops’ conference Office of International Justice and Peace, said the church is unequivocal in its denunciation of all torture.
“It cannot be contravened under any circumstances,†said Kolecchi, “including the use of detention for the sole purpose of trying to obtain information. It’s so standard in Catholic teaching that we’re opposed to torture.â€
Ricard has written several letters to members of Congress stating the opposition of the church to torture and urging laws to ban it. The bishops’ conference has issued statements against torture in the wake of current charges.
The Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi USA, is also making its voice heard on the subject. Its Web site, www.paxchristiusa.org, has many statements on the Christian teaching on torture. It includes a national sign-in statement, “A Christian Call to Stop Torture Now.â€
After a quote from John Paul II, the statement says: “As followers of Jesus, we must state clearly and unequivocally that torture violates the basic human dignity afforded all of God’s children, and is never morally acceptable. On this two-year anniversary of the revelations of the cruel, inhumane and humiliating treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison -- the first of numerous revelations regarding institutionalized torture practices in the U.S. war on terrorism -- we reiterate our church’s profound respect for the dignity of all persons and reject as antithetical to Christianity any and all justifications for the use of torture.â€
Most disturbing now, says Pax Christi’s executive director, David Robinson, is the “merging of the profit motive with the routine use of torture.†Robinson says the U.S. government is “outsourcing torture to private entities†in Iraq that use abusive interrogation methods. The introduction of profit into the mix, he says, assures that there will be more of it.
During Lent especially, he says, the image of Jesus, who was tortured to death, should be powerful for Catholics, reminding them that “Christ is being crucified today through the practice of torture.â€
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
Have you ever been held under water? My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool. I am for everything torture related as far as combatants go. If you pick up a gun with the intention to fight on the battlefield, your nervous system is fair game. You just volunteered for me to bash your toes with a hammer and stick hot pins in your face to get any strategy I want from you on the battlefield.
War is not a sport and it is not a game. Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place. The Geneva convention is bullshit. Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).
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Tourture is wrong whoever does it. I believe it is a disrcase to our and any country who uses it info gained is unreliable at best
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I would torture child abusers and some rapists
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Tourture is wrong whoever does it. I believe it is a disrcase to our and any country who uses it info gained is unreliable at best
You think feeding them milk and cookies gets you reliable info? That doesn't work as proven by history. I think it is only useful in cases of actual warfare, as there are thousands of lives that could be lost depending on strategic advantages gained through interrogation techniques.
It is best to just kill paedos and rapist or whatever as we do not need information from them (just for them to not eat food and take up resources).
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
Have you ever been held under water? My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool. I am for everything torture related as far as combatants go. If you pick up a gun with the intention to fight on the battlefield, your nervous system is fair game. You just volunteered for me to bash your toes with a hammer and stick hot pins in your face to get any strategy I want from you on the battlefield.
War is not a sport and it is not a game. Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place. The Geneva convention is bullshit. Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).
When I was a kid, someone jumped on top of me at the swimming pool, driving me under the water. It only took me a few seconds to reach the surface again, but it made enough of an impact to have stayed with me for all these years, even though I have no problem with swimming underwater of my own volition.
Do you really think most of the people at Guantanimo bay are terrorists? 420 of the 775 detainees at Guantanamo have been released, and only 60-80 of the remaining 355 are to be tried, with the rest released at some undetermined date. With torture being standard issue for all detainees at Guantanamo, that's a lot of innocent people who've been tortured, and that's just the most famous of the US torture camps.
Given the way anti-terror legislation is being applied indiscriminately to US citizens (and UK citizens), I hope you remain so in favour of torture when they come for you in the middle of the night on some bullshit charge.
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It would have to be some far fetched bullshit, that much is for sure. I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine. If anything after prolonged torture I would just tell them the truth until I saw that I was going to have to say something they actually wanted to hear (make up my own bullshit to placate them). Maybe I would get lucky and get them to kill me or find a way to fashion something to kill myself with. I am going to die of something, at least it would be an interesting death (though painful as fuck most likely).
Having been held under many times by people in swimming pool fights, it would take quite a bit to make me say anything if I actually had something to hide. I am sorry you had such a bad experience in a pool that one time lol. I have been driven into the ground by a wave that was 11 feet tall while trying to surf during a hurricane once lol. Went board first into the sand. That was the closest I ever came to actually drowning. The board went right into my chest, knocking the air out of me. Great times.
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It would have to be some far fetched bullshit, that much is for sure. I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine. If anything after prolonged torture I would just tell them the truth until I saw that I was going to have to say something they actually wanted to hear (make up my own bullshit to placate them). Maybe I would get lucky and get them to kill me or find a way to fashion something to kill myself with. I am going to die of something, at least it would be an interesting death (though painful as fuck most likely).
So you argue that torture is useful in providing 'strategic advantages' while admitting that you'd make up any old bullshit to end your own torture? Torture is little more than a way to extract bullshit from people, and often that bullshit implicates other innocent people who in turn are tortured and spout bullshit, and so the cycle continues.
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I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine.
You would by the time they were through with you. People are captured and held on a moment of bad luck.
I don't know if the information gained is worth the damage to innocent people, but I would have to investigate the subject a lot further before I thought I could make a valid judgment about it.
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It would have to be some far fetched bullshit, that much is for sure. I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine. If anything after prolonged torture I would just tell them the truth until I saw that I was going to have to say something they actually wanted to hear (make up my own bullshit to placate them). Maybe I would get lucky and get them to kill me or find a way to fashion something to kill myself with. I am going to die of something, at least it would be an interesting death (though painful as fuck most likely).
So you argue that torture is useful in providing 'strategic advantages' while admitting that you'd make up any old bullshit to end your own torture? Torture is little more than a way to extract bullshit from people, and often that bullshit implicates other innocent people who in turn are tortured and spout bullshit, and so the cycle continues.
That is what I would do if I was forced to, as would anyone who was truly innocent and had no way of stopping the torture. This happens in police interrogation as well, especially without the violence (informants are known to lie even).
What would be the better method in your opinion for extracting valuable information from an unwilling source?
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Here's a first hand account of waterboarding, from a French journalist who was taken prisoner by French paratroopers during the Algerian war:
We now turn to a real-life survivor of torture of the Algerian war. Henri Alleg is a French journalist who was arrested by French paratroopers in Algeria in ’57. Alleg was sympathetic to Algerian independence. He was interrogated for a month. He was questioned. He was waterboarded repeatedly. Alleg described his ordeal in an essay called “The Question,†which was published in 1958 with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. The book was subsequently banned in France and legalized only after the Algerian war ended in 1962. Henri Alleg is eighty-six years old now, survived torture by French paratroopers, lives now in Paris and joins us on the phone.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Henri Alleg.
HENRI ALLEG: Hello.
AMY GOODMAN: It is good to have you with us.
HENRI ALLEG: Thank you. Can you make it a little louder?
AMY GOODMAN: Can you hear me now?
HENRI ALLEG: Yes, thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe—as you hear the debate in the United States around whether waterboarding is torture, specifically tell us about your experience of waterboarding. Where were you being held, and what exactly did the French military do to you?
HENRI ALLEG: Well, I have described the waterboarding I was submitted to. And no one can say, having passed through it, that this was not torture, especially when he has endured other types of torture—burning, electricity and beating, and so on. So I am really astonished that this is a big question in the States about this, because the real question is not waterboarding or not waterboarding, it’s the use of torture in such a war, and this use of torture, torture in general.
A man liked General Massu, who was the chief organizer of torture in Algeria and who died about two years ago, asked about three months before his death what he thought of torture and the use of—the general use of torture in Algeria, said that he regretted it and that the war could have been—could have gone on without torture. In fact, torture is not the main thing in such a war. The war was against the Algerian people, and every kind of torture used against an Algerian man or woman would only help the Algerians to fight back, and that when a son knew that his father was tortured, he had only one idea, that is, join the fighters who had tortured his father. So, I don’t think this is the good question.
But to answer precisely your question, it is a terrible way of torturing a man, because you’re bringing—you bring him next to death and then back to life. And sometimes he doesn’t come back to life. So, the use of torture, in my opinion, is a way of making all people fear that if they fight, if they join the fighters against Algeria, they would undergo such a treatment. So it’s the use of terror against the people who fight. It’s not a way of getting whatever information; sometimes they get it, but most of the time it’s useless. So it is not a way of winning a war, even if the people who lead this war say that they have—it’s an obligation for them to use this method if they want victory at the end of the war. That’s my opinion.
AMY GOODMAN: Henri Alleg, I realize it was, what, about a half a century ago that you were held, interrogated and tortured. But I was wondering, since obviously I think most people, most in the civilian population, even soldiers, are not really familiar with what exactly waterboarding is. It has become almost a kind of catchphrase. Can you explain exactly what happened to you?
HENRI ALLEG: Well, I was put on a plank, on a board, fastened to it and taken to a tap. And my face was covered with a rag. Very quickly, the rag was completely full of water. And, of course, you have the impression of being drowned. And—
AMY GOODMAN: The “tap,†meaning you were put under a water faucet?
HENRI ALLEG: A tap, yes, tap water. So, very quickly, the water ran all over my face. I couldn’t, of course, breathe. And after a few minutes, fighting against the impression of getting drowned, you can’t resist. And you feel as if you were drowning yourself. And this is a terrible impression of coming very near death. And so, when the paratroopers, the torturers, see that you’re drowning, they would stop, let you breathe, and try again. So that impression of getting near to death, every time they helped you to come back to life by breathing, it’s a terrible, terrible impression of torture and of death, being near death. So, that was my impression. But it’s difficult to say that this—
AMY GOODMAN: In the context—explain the context for us, Henri Alleg, as they held you under the faucet and the water filled your lungs, what did the French military—what were they demanding of you, and how did you stop it? How did it start again?
HENRI ALLEG: They just wanted me to, first of all, say what I was doing in the moments I was illegal, because I stopped, of course, going to the newspaper, because it was suppressed. So I had to hide, because I knew that I would be taken and sent to a concentration camp. So they wanted to know who were the people I met during that illegal period, what was the people that I had met and what they were doing. That’s what they wanted from me—
AMY GOODMAN: Did you tell them?
HENRI ALLEG:—is to denounce my friends, and I refused to open my mouth to say a word about that. I wouldn’t betray my friends. They didn’t know much more about me. And that is what they wanted. And I didn’t want to help them in any way that would be possible.
AMY GOODMAN: When the water came into your lungs, how did you remain conscious? How did you resist it?
HENRI ALLEG: Well, they said to me, “When you want to talk, you just move your fingers.†Move your fingers. Of course, I was strapped to a board. And the first time I—they started that, I didn’t realize even that I was moving desperately my fingers. So I moved my fingers, and they shouted around me, “So he’s going to talk! He’s going to talk!†So they let me breathe. And as soon as I got a little breath again, I denounced it, and I still refused. So they started again. They said, “He’s making a joke out of us.†So they gave me very heavy blows on my chest and on my belly to make the—get out the water of my lungs and of my body. And they started again afterwards.
And suddenly, as I have explained it—I think it was the third time—I just fainted. And I heard them after a while saying, “Oh, he’s coming back. He’s coming back.†They didn’t want me to die at once, and I knew afterwards, a long time afterwards, that many of the people who went under that waterboarding, as you call it, after having had some moments of fainting, some of them would die, drowned, “asphyxier,†as we say in French. It’s completely—it’s impossible to breathe, so they die, as if they were drowned, and this kind of “accident,†as they call, was very frequent.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you, Henri Alleg, have the sensation of dying?
HENRI ALLEG: Pardon?
AMY GOODMAN: Did you feel the sensation of dying?
HENRI ALLEG: Yes, and that’s a terrible sensation.
AMY GOODMAN: What did you feel?
HENRI ALLEG: Well, You feel that you’re going to die. Of course, you don’t want to die, and in the same time you don’t want to accept the conditions that they make around you to let you live. So, finally, at this third time, before I fainted, I was really decided to die and not to answer at any cost.
But once again, I’m really surprised that this is the big question put before the American opinion now and not another question: Is such a war a war that can be accepted with such—in such conditions and with such tools? Is it a civilized country that can use such things? And is the fact that this way of fighting—as some military say, it can’t be otherwise—is it acceptable? I think it is not acceptable, especially that the way to legalize such a way of fighting, some military say, we cannot do otherwise. It has no meaning at all. The people who lead a fight for freedom and liberty, even if some of them accept the conditions of the people who torture them, they help hundreds and thousands of other people to join the fight, because it appears to them as something that cannot be accepted by any man who thinks that his fight is honorable and justified.
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It would have to be some far fetched bullshit, that much is for sure. I don't have any real skeletons in my closet or anything of that sort, so I should be fine. If anything after prolonged torture I would just tell them the truth until I saw that I was going to have to say something they actually wanted to hear (make up my own bullshit to placate them). Maybe I would get lucky and get them to kill me or find a way to fashion something to kill myself with. I am going to die of something, at least it would be an interesting death (though painful as fuck most likely).
So you argue that torture is useful in providing 'strategic advantages' while admitting that you'd make up any old bullshit to end your own torture? Torture is little more than a way to extract bullshit from people, and often that bullshit implicates other innocent people who in turn are tortured and spout bullshit, and so the cycle continues.
That is what I would do if I was forced to, as would anyone who was truly innocent and had no way of stopping the torture. This happens in police interrogation as well, especially without the violence (informants are known to lie even).
What would be the better method in your opinion for extracting valuable information from an unwilling source?
I suggest a game of chess and possibly a steak dinner or two for the really tough cases:
For six decades, they held their silence.
The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.
When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.
Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.
Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
"I feel like the military is using us to say, 'We did spooky stuff then, so it's okay to do it now,' " said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.
When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece.
"I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war," said Weiss, chairman of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and a human rights and trademark lawyer in New York City.
The veterans of P.O. Box 1142, a top-secret installation in Fairfax County that went only by its postal code name, were brought back to Fort Hunt by park rangers who are piecing together a portrait of what happened there during the war.
Nearly 4,000 prisoners of war, most of them German scientists and submariners, were brought in for questioning for days, even weeks, before their presence was reported to the Red Cross, a process that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. Many of the interrogators were refugees from the Third Reich.
"We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice," said John Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Denmark.
The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor.
"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."
Exactly what went on behind the barbed-wire fences of Fort Hunt has been a mystery that has lured amateur historians and curious neighbors for decades.
During the war, nearby residents watched buses with darkened windows roar toward the fort day and night. They couldn't have imagined that groundbreaking secrets in rocketry, microwave technology and submarine tactics were being peeled apart right on the grounds that are now a popular picnic area where moonbounces mushroom every weekend.
When Vincent Santucci arrived at the National Park Service's George Washington Memorial Parkway office as chief ranger four years ago, he asked his cultural resource specialist, Brandon Bies, to do some research so they could post signs throughout the park, explaining its history and giving it a bit more dignity.
That assignment changed dramatically when ranger Dana Dierkes was leading a tour of the park one day and someone told her about a rumored Fort Hunt veteran.
It was Fred Michel, who worked in engineering in Alexandria for 65 years, never telling his neighbors that he once faced off with prisoners and pried wartime secrets from them.
Michel directed them to other vets, and they remembered others.
Bies went from being a ranger researching mountains of topics in stacks of papers to flying across the country, camera and klieg lights in tow, to document the fading memories of veterans.
He, Santucci and others have spent hours trying to sharpen the focus of gauzy memories, coaxing complex details from men who swore on their generation's honor to never speak of the work they did at P.O. Box 1142.
"The National Park Service is committed to telling your story, and now it belongs to the nation," said David Vela, superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
There is a deadline. Each day, about 1,100 World War II veterans die, said Jean Davis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army's Freedom Team Salute program, which recognizes veterans and the parents, spouses and employers who provide support for active-duty soldiers.
By gathering at Fort Hunt yesterday, the quiet men could be saluted for the work they did so long ago.
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An interesting comment about the above article:
The gentlemen was a Captain on Iwo Jima; now he's a retired Marine Corps General.
On Iwo Jima the Marines and Corpsmen knew their most likely fate if captured was a gruesome death, and I do not think there is a single example of one of them surviving capture on the island.
In spite of that potential brutality by the hands of the Japanese, the Marines treated their Japanese prisoners humanely (once they were processed back; many Japanese were shot down by front-line riflemen). They were able to gather valuable intelligence for the Okinawa operation, and they were able to employ their Japanese prisoners in their efforts to get other Japanese to surrender.
What the Marine Corps officer of his day wanted was for their enemy to obey the rules of war so that captured America boys would stand a chance for survival, and they reasoned that the only way forward to that goal was for the Marine Corps to obey the rules even if their enemy had not signed on to obey them.
The somewhat counterintuitive outcome, to some anyway, was it proved to be an excellent interrogation environment.
Hollywood has made many Americans think the only way to get information is torture. It's one of the worst ways to get information.
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I would say it is reading history where people have tortured other and gotten information, rather than picking out a single instance where it has worked the other way. Hollywood does fuck things up a bit for most, if one takes their viewpoint seriously. I would argue that Hollywood is against torture more than for it, if anything (depends on how you view the films). I see Hollywood films as propaganda of mostly the Liberal variety. Torture worked fine in every century leading up to the WW1 era, then you have where the Geneva convention came about and people started adding rules to war (no torture is just one). Wars then became more policing than usual and really were never the same due to how strategically they were limited by the new rules.
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I would say it is reading history where people have tortured other and gotten information, rather than picking out a single instance where it has worked the other way.
By historical, do you mean the tens of thousands of people who were tortured into confessing to witchcraft and boinking the devil? Sure, torture has a great track record of providing valuable and reliable evidence through the centuries.
Wars then became more policing than usual and really were never the same due to how strategically they were limited by the new rules.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Would you like to go back to the old days of razing cities to the ground and killing, raping and torturing all the inhabitants? Would you still oppose the Geneva conventions if your home town was invaded and I was raping your mum to death in front of you?
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Yes. We would be able to have Viking style raiding again lol. I own a gun, so it is likely that I would die before I would witness someone rape my mother.
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Also, how about the destruction of the order of the Knights Templar, who were tortured into giving false confessions and burned at the stake when they became politically inconvenient?
In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two Orders. Neither was amenable to the idea but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months. While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed charges that had been made two years prior by an ousted Templar. It was generally agreed that the charges were false but Clement sent King Philip IV of France a written request for assistance in the investigation. King Philip was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English and decided to seize upon the rumors for his own purposes. He began pressuring the Church to take action against the Order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.[21]
On Friday October 13, 1307 (a date incorrectly linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition),[22][23] Philip ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The Templars were charged with numerous heresies and tortured to extract false confessions of blasphemy. The confessions, despite having been obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. After more bullying from Philip, Pope Clement then issued the bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.[24]
Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310 Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.[25][26]
With Philip threatening military action unless the Pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the Order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in excelso, which officially dissolved the Order, and Ad providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.[28]
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Yes. We would be able to have Viking style raiding again lol. I own a gun, so it is likely that I would die before I would witness someone rape my mother.
Lets hope for your sake that your possession of a gun results in your death, and not your capture and torture. You should keep it under your pillow in case you get a no-knock raid by SWAT in the middle of the night because someone made up some bullshit during torture that lead the authorities to your address.
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I would be harder to capture with a gun. Putting it under your pillow really isn't going to do much and generally a bad idea. I am a really light sleeper, so me waking up at the sound of my door opening (of my apartment) let alone someone breaking the door down, is more than enough to wake me up (kinda sucks to be that easy to wake up). The SWAT would set off the alarm and I would grab my gun (which is convenient). I either would shoot myself or make them have to shoot me. I am not important enough for a SWAT raid, as I keep a low profile. I don't have any dark secrets that would remotely link me to being a suspect in something serious. I smoke weed, that is the extent of my illegal activity for the most part. They won't raid my apartment because I toke up every once in a while. At most they would want is some drug related connections. I am not a politically motivated person as I see it all as a waste, so it is doubtful that I would be targeted for that reason.
I don't live with my mother anyways haha. It would be not likely that I would witness her rape. The SWAT wouldn't rape her from what I have understood from their tactics. They are not Vikings. She is of no importance politically, so it is doubtful that she would be a target.
It would have been nice if the Knights Templar had never existed, let alone have to be taken out that way. They had some secrets and had some real problems. It would have been best if the Pope and the Papacy in general were destroyed, let alone the Knights Templar.
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Give me a few days and I will get you to sign a confession that you killed Kennedy
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I would be harder to capture with a gun. Putting it under your pillow really isn't going to do much and generally a bad idea. I am a really light sleeper, so me waking up at the sound of my door opening (of my apartment) let alone someone breaking the door down, is more than enough to wake me up (kinda sucks to be that easy to wake up). The SWAT would set off the alarm and I would grab my gun (which is convenient). I either would shoot myself or make them have to shoot me. I am not important enough for a SWAT raid, as I keep a low profile. I don't have any dark secrets that would remotely link me to being a suspect in something serious. I smoke weed, that is the extent of my illegal activity for the most part. They won't raid my apartment because I toke up every once in a while. At most they would want is some drug related connections. I am not a politically motivated person as I see it all as a waste, so it is doubtful that I would be targeted for that reason.
You don't think pot is enough to warrant a SWAT raid? Think again.
Andrew Diotaiuto has returned repeatedly to his grave at North Haven’s All Saints Cemetery.
He sometimes makes two or three trips a day from his home in East Haven.
Burying a child is always painful, but the last moments of his son’s life are especially troubling.
On Aug. 5, Anthony Diotaiuto was shot to death by a SWAT team from the Sunrise, Fla., Police Department during a dawn narcotics raid in the home he shared and helped buy with his mother, Marlene Whittier.
According to police, he was found with about 2 ounces of marijuana, plastic bags and a weight scale.
On Oct. 14, 1999, at 1:30 a.m. in Albuquerque, N.M., Larry Harper - despondent and unemployed - called his brother and said he was going to commit suicide. The brother alerted police, and nine SWAT team members were dispatched to a picnic area, where Harper was sitting with a gun. After chasing Harper into a stand of juniper bushes, a sniper shot him dead after SWAT officers denied arriving family members the chance to talk to him. The city later settled a lawsuit for $200,000. The city dismantled the SWAT team after the incident.
On July 12, 1998, acting on a single tip that Pedro Oregon Navarro was dealing drugs, a team of Houston officers charged into the apartment of the 22-year-old, who picked up a handgun. The officers unleashed some 30 shots, hitting Navarro 12 times, nine times in the back. No drugs were found.
On Oct. 12, 1995, at 2:30 a.m., Stephen Medford Shively, a college student in Topeka, Kan., was alarmed when several men battered down his door. He called 911, then grabbed a gun and fired through the door, killing an officer. Officers returned fire from the other side of the door, wounding Shively. A Kansas jury acquitted him of murder charges, saying that he acted in self-defense, and an appeals court concluded that officers used misleading information to obtain a warrant.
On April 15, 1995, a Dodge County team raided the trailer of Scott Bryant, a 29-year-old technical college student who was living in Beaver Dam with his 8-year-old son. As the first officer to smash through the door was placing Bryant on a couch to be handcuffed, Detective Robert Neuman rushed in and delivered a fatal bullet to Bryant's chest. A small amount of marijuana was found in the trailer. While no charges were ever filed against the detective, the county paid $950,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Bryant's family.
On Aug. 9, 1994, in Riverside County, Calif., 87-year-old Donald Harrison and his 77-year-old wife, Elsie, were asleep in their mobile home when deputies smashed in looking for a drug lab. Donald died of a heart attack four days later. It turned out that police had the wrong place, despite a detailed description of the suspect home, which was a different color than the Harrisons' trailer.
I don't live with my mother anyways haha. It would be not likely that I would witness her rape. The SWAT wouldn't rape her from what I have understood from their tactics. They are not Vikings. She is of no importance politically, so it is doubtful that she would be a target.
Perhaps if people like you keep supporting torture and your country turns into a complete shithole, the rape and torture of family members will become a common strategy to extract confessions. It wouldn't be the first time that tactic's been used, and it won't be the last.
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
WHY? Torture is FUN. :zoinks:
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War is not a sport and it is not a game. Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place. The Geneva convention is bullshit. Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).
No. The GC is NOT bullshit. Abandoning parts of it
will lead to it being abandoned entirely, and countries
being freer to commit crimes such as genocide, under
the argument that the so-called powers have abandoned
it. Which will gain traction. It is a powerful tool for global
opinion.
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Give me a few days and I will get you to sign a confession that you killed Kennedy
lol only if I were old enough. Haven't gotten a hold of time travel yet.
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War is not a sport and it is not a game. Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place. The Geneva convention is bullshit. Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).
No. The GC is NOT bullshit. Abandoning parts of it
will lead to it being abandoned entirely, and countries
being freer to commit crimes such as genocide, under
the argument that the so-called powers have abandoned
it. Which will gain traction. It is a powerful tool for global
opinion.
Yes, we don't want them to take out an entire race. That doesn't mean when it happens, we will be able to stop it. How about Turkey and those Armenians?
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I would be harder to capture with a gun. Putting it under your pillow really isn't going to do much and generally a bad idea. I am a really light sleeper, so me waking up at the sound of my door opening (of my apartment) let alone someone breaking the door down, is more than enough to wake me up (kinda sucks to be that easy to wake up). The SWAT would set off the alarm and I would grab my gun (which is convenient). I either would shoot myself or make them have to shoot me. I am not important enough for a SWAT raid, as I keep a low profile. I don't have any dark secrets that would remotely link me to being a suspect in something serious. I smoke weed, that is the extent of my illegal activity for the most part. They won't raid my apartment because I toke up every once in a while. At most they would want is some drug related connections. I am not a politically motivated person as I see it all as a waste, so it is doubtful that I would be targeted for that reason.
You don't think pot is enough to warrant a SWAT raid? Think again.
Andrew Diotaiuto has returned repeatedly to his grave at North Haven’s All Saints Cemetery.
He sometimes makes two or three trips a day from his home in East Haven.
Burying a child is always painful, but the last moments of his son’s life are especially troubling.
On Aug. 5, Anthony Diotaiuto was shot to death by a SWAT team from the Sunrise, Fla., Police Department during a dawn narcotics raid in the home he shared and helped buy with his mother, Marlene Whittier.
According to police, he was found with about 2 ounces of marijuana, plastic bags and a weight scale.
On Oct. 14, 1999, at 1:30 a.m. in Albuquerque, N.M., Larry Harper - despondent and unemployed - called his brother and said he was going to commit suicide. The brother alerted police, and nine SWAT team members were dispatched to a picnic area, where Harper was sitting with a gun. After chasing Harper into a stand of juniper bushes, a sniper shot him dead after SWAT officers denied arriving family members the chance to talk to him. The city later settled a lawsuit for $200,000. The city dismantled the SWAT team after the incident.
On July 12, 1998, acting on a single tip that Pedro Oregon Navarro was dealing drugs, a team of Houston officers charged into the apartment of the 22-year-old, who picked up a handgun. The officers unleashed some 30 shots, hitting Navarro 12 times, nine times in the back. No drugs were found.
On Oct. 12, 1995, at 2:30 a.m., Stephen Medford Shively, a college student in Topeka, Kan., was alarmed when several men battered down his door. He called 911, then grabbed a gun and fired through the door, killing an officer. Officers returned fire from the other side of the door, wounding Shively. A Kansas jury acquitted him of murder charges, saying that he acted in self-defense, and an appeals court concluded that officers used misleading information to obtain a warrant.
On April 15, 1995, a Dodge County team raided the trailer of Scott Bryant, a 29-year-old technical college student who was living in Beaver Dam with his 8-year-old son. As the first officer to smash through the door was placing Bryant on a couch to be handcuffed, Detective Robert Neuman rushed in and delivered a fatal bullet to Bryant's chest. A small amount of marijuana was found in the trailer. While no charges were ever filed against the detective, the county paid $950,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Bryant's family.
On Aug. 9, 1994, in Riverside County, Calif., 87-year-old Donald Harrison and his 77-year-old wife, Elsie, were asleep in their mobile home when deputies smashed in looking for a drug lab. Donald died of a heart attack four days later. It turned out that police had the wrong place, despite a detailed description of the suspect home, which was a different color than the Harrisons' trailer.
I don't live with my mother anyways haha. It would be not likely that I would witness her rape. The SWAT wouldn't rape her from what I have understood from their tactics. They are not Vikings. She is of no importance politically, so it is doubtful that she would be a target.
Perhaps if people like you keep supporting torture and your country turns into a complete shithole, the rape and torture of family members will become a common strategy to extract confessions. It wouldn't be the first time that tactic's been used, and it won't be the last.
I never have more than a quarter of an ounce on me at a time. I also don't have scales or any other thing that would pertain to selling in my apartment.
The whole world is turning into a shithole and torture is just a part of what is going on wrong lol. It sure won't be the last time it is used, as torture will be around well after everyone on this board is dead. That is unless everyone dies, then there will be no humans to torture each other.
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I would be harder to capture with a gun. Putting it under your pillow really isn't going to do much and generally a bad idea. I am a really light sleeper, so me waking up at the sound of my door opening (of my apartment) let alone someone breaking the door down, is more than enough to wake me up (kinda sucks to be that easy to wake up). The SWAT would set off the alarm and I would grab my gun (which is convenient). I either would shoot myself or make them have to shoot me. I am not important enough for a SWAT raid, as I keep a low profile. I don't have any dark secrets that would remotely link me to being a suspect in something serious. I smoke weed, that is the extent of my illegal activity for the most part. They won't raid my apartment because I toke up every once in a while. At most they would want is some drug related connections. I am not a politically motivated person as I see it all as a waste, so it is doubtful that I would be targeted for that reason.
You don't think pot is enough to warrant a SWAT raid? Think again.
Andrew Diotaiuto has returned repeatedly to his grave at North Haven’s All Saints Cemetery.
He sometimes makes two or three trips a day from his home in East Haven.
Burying a child is always painful, but the last moments of his son’s life are especially troubling.
On Aug. 5, Anthony Diotaiuto was shot to death by a SWAT team from the Sunrise, Fla., Police Department during a dawn narcotics raid in the home he shared and helped buy with his mother, Marlene Whittier.
According to police, he was found with about 2 ounces of marijuana, plastic bags and a weight scale.
On Oct. 14, 1999, at 1:30 a.m. in Albuquerque, N.M., Larry Harper - despondent and unemployed - called his brother and said he was going to commit suicide. The brother alerted police, and nine SWAT team members were dispatched to a picnic area, where Harper was sitting with a gun. After chasing Harper into a stand of juniper bushes, a sniper shot him dead after SWAT officers denied arriving family members the chance to talk to him. The city later settled a lawsuit for $200,000. The city dismantled the SWAT team after the incident.
On July 12, 1998, acting on a single tip that Pedro Oregon Navarro was dealing drugs, a team of Houston officers charged into the apartment of the 22-year-old, who picked up a handgun. The officers unleashed some 30 shots, hitting Navarro 12 times, nine times in the back. No drugs were found.
On Oct. 12, 1995, at 2:30 a.m., Stephen Medford Shively, a college student in Topeka, Kan., was alarmed when several men battered down his door. He called 911, then grabbed a gun and fired through the door, killing an officer. Officers returned fire from the other side of the door, wounding Shively. A Kansas jury acquitted him of murder charges, saying that he acted in self-defense, and an appeals court concluded that officers used misleading information to obtain a warrant.
On April 15, 1995, a Dodge County team raided the trailer of Scott Bryant, a 29-year-old technical college student who was living in Beaver Dam with his 8-year-old son. As the first officer to smash through the door was placing Bryant on a couch to be handcuffed, Detective Robert Neuman rushed in and delivered a fatal bullet to Bryant's chest. A small amount of marijuana was found in the trailer. While no charges were ever filed against the detective, the county paid $950,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Bryant's family.
On Aug. 9, 1994, in Riverside County, Calif., 87-year-old Donald Harrison and his 77-year-old wife, Elsie, were asleep in their mobile home when deputies smashed in looking for a drug lab. Donald died of a heart attack four days later. It turned out that police had the wrong place, despite a detailed description of the suspect home, which was a different color than the Harrisons' trailer.
I don't live with my mother anyways haha. It would be not likely that I would witness her rape. The SWAT wouldn't rape her from what I have understood from their tactics. They are not Vikings. She is of no importance politically, so it is doubtful that she would be a target.
Perhaps if people like you keep supporting torture and your country turns into a complete shithole, the rape and torture of family members will become a common strategy to extract confessions. It wouldn't be the first time that tactic's been used, and it won't be the last.
I never have more than a quarter of an ounce on me at a time. I also don't have scales or any other thing that would pertain to selling in my apartment.
The whole world is turning into a shithole and torture is just a part of what is going on wrong lol. It sure won't be the last time it is used, as torture will be around well after everyone on this board is dead. That is unless everyone dies, then there will be no humans to torture each other.
It doesn't take even a quarter of an ounce; just for the SWAT to get the wrong house or for some asshole to give an anonymous tip because they don't like you. If said asshole was to say they heard you planning a bombing instead of selling them some pot, you'd be shipped off for some quality time in one of the CIA secret prisons, and if you were very lucky, you'd be left in a dumpster in Cairo after 5 years of being tortured.
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Yes, we don't want them to take out an entire race.
Why?
That doesn't mean when it happens, we will be able to stop it.
IF now, 'twould be fairly easy.
How about Turkey and those Armenians?
Not like anyone CARED much, at the time. Outside the primary
actors.
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Grossly over-exaggerated scenario you used there Peter. I have known exactly one person from around here that has been arrested for pot and gotten in serious trouble (I once had a misdemeanor for a eighth). The guy that did get arrested was growing and being as obvious as you possibly could be (he was an idiot). I don't have people around here that hate me enough to want me to get arrested. I doubt any "enemy" that I have would even know where I live currently.
I know my local police force better than you do, especially now since I have a couple of friends on the force (they even used to smoke weed themselves lol... fags). That and my family has a damn good lawyer. I am not too worried, as I never smoke outside of my apartment and barely any people traffic in and out of my place. My brother is on violation of probation himself and has a damn warrant out for his arrest, and they don't even bother to come to my parent's house, where it is common knowledge that he lives lol.
I advocated torture usage as a means in military strategy and not for police usage. There is a difference.
My brother knows a guy who got arrested for a fake bomb threat at FSU, and he didn't even see the CIA or anyone federally affiliated(actually works for Obama's campaign rofl). The guy just had to spend some time in a mental hospital (he was really fucked up at the time). The story went that he had something in a large bag and told a cop that "This shit is the BOMB, man" and immediately got thrown to the ground. It was in the newspaper and the guy barely even remembers the night (blackout drinker).
I like some brutality and butchery with my warfare, that is all. Genocide is too specific in its targets to a degree. I like to do it more by a region at a time as far as warfare goes (resources are better reasons to kill).
I really prefer my mass death to be by lottery system. Imagine lottery based mass executions lol. I know the randomness would not be truly random, but it still would be damn fantastic if it were at least a well done attempt at randomizing a thinning of the herd. Instead of winning 13 million dollars, you get to die.
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Drug issues depend heavily, based on state.
Here, the federal immigration officers are
citing people for tiny amounts of pot, because
AZ law is so harsh. In Eugene, the cops would
just ask kids to go smoke at home, rather than on
the street. :zoinks:
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Drug issues depend heavily, based on state.
Here, the federal immigration officers are
citing people for tiny amounts of pot, because
AZ law is so harsh. In Eugene, the cops would
just ask kids to go smoke at home, rather than on
the street. :zoinks:
I have gotten that before when I was younger actually. Jacksonville is in the Bible belt too lol. That cop just asked us to do it on our own property, which was what we normally did but we were being particularly jackass that day. He didn't actually see us smoke anything, but the smell was still there. I haven't been bothered while smoking much during my life, my parents usually get onto me about it after the case and I have never been caught "red handed" by anyone that I can remember.
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Grossly over-exaggerated scenario you used there Peter. I have known exactly one person from around here that has been arrested for pot and gotten in serious trouble (I once had a misdemeanor for a eighth). The guy that did get arrested was growing and being as obvious as you possibly could be (he was an idiot). I don't have people around here that hate me enough to want me to get arrested. I doubt any "enemy" that I have would even know where I live currently.
I know my local police force better than you do, especially now since I have a couple of friends on the force (they even used to smoke weed themselves lol... fags). That and my family has a damn good lawyer. I am not too worried, as I never smoke outside of my apartment and barely any people traffic in and out of my place. My brother is on violation of probation himself and has a damn warrant out for his arrest, and they don't even bother to come to my parent's house, where it is common knowledge that he lives lol.
I recommend you keep living where you do, because other locations in the US are not nearly so tolerant.
I advocated torture usage as a means in military strategy and not for police usage. There is a difference.
I hate to break it to you, but the police already use torture, although the public don't cheer lead it like they do with military torture. With increasing support for military torture, police torture will only increase, especially given the increasingly blurred line between the two as police continue to use military tactics, weapons and equipment in their operations.
Between the years of 1972 and 1991, approximately 135 African-American men and women were arrested and tortured at the hands of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and officers under his command at Area 2 police headquarters. Some of these victims were as young as thirteen years old. Various court cases have established that the methods of torture used in the interrogation of suspects included electric shock to the ears and genitalia, mock executions, suffocation, and burning. While Jon Burge was ultimately fired by the Chicago Police Department, not a single perpetrator of the tortures has ever been criminally prosecuted.
These incidents were not isolated and allegations of abuse by Burge continue to surface. In fact, the Area 2 cases are seen by many observers as part of a pattern and practice of racially-motivated police brutality in Chicago that has been revealed over the course of many years. This site is devoted to telling the stories of the Area 2 victims and seeking justice for those without a voice.
Today, over two decades have passed since the first allegations of torture by Chicago police officers surfaced. Many of the allegations have been acknowledged to be credible. For example, Judge Milton Shadur of the U.S. District Court (N.D. Ill.) found that:
“It is now common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and many officers working under him in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions.†U.S. ex rel. Maxwell v. Gilmore 37 F. Supp.2d 1078 (N.D. Ill. 1999)
And yet—Jon Burge and his fellow torturers remain free. None of the perpetrators have faced a criminal trial.
My brother knows a guy who got arrested for a fake bomb threat at FSU, and he didn't even see the CIA or anyone federally affiliated(actually works for Obama's campaign rofl). The guy just had to spend some time in a mental hospital (he was really fucked up at the time). The story went that he had something in a large bag and told a cop that "This shit is the BOMB, man" and immediately got thrown to the ground. It was in the newspaper and the guy barely even remembers the night (blackout drinker).
I like some brutality and butchery with my warfare, that is all. Genocide is too specific in its targets to a degree. I like to do it more by a region at a time as far as warfare goes (resources are better reasons to kill).
I really prefer my mass death to be by lottery system. Imagine lottery based mass executions lol. I know the randomness would not be truly random, but it still would be damn fantastic if it were at least a well done attempt at randomizing a thinning of the herd. Instead of winning 13 million dollars, you get to die.
I'm sure you look forward to the day the US starts hosting 'The Running Man' game show.
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Give me a few days and I will get you to sign a confession that you killed Kennedy
lol only if I were old enough. Haven't gotten a hold of time travel yet.
That is irrelevant you would still sign it
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Torture goes against what this country was founded on and is a stain on our already bad reputation
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I'm sure you look forward to the day the US starts hosting 'The Running Man' game show.
I know I do. Blatant abuse is much better than
hidden.
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Torture goes against what this country was founded on and is a stain on our already bad reputation
Yes, because we treated our enemies, such as the natives, so bloody
well. Don't delude yourself too much about this place.
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
Have you ever been held under water? My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool.
The Nazis did that to my grandad when he was a young boy. Just because they caught him trying to pick some rotten apples from a tree.
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I used to play water polo. Hated that part of it.
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Torture goes against what this country was founded on and is a stain on our already bad reputation
Yes, because we treated our enemies, such as the natives, so bloody
well. Don't delude yourself too much about this place.
Hay they got casinos out of it
I don't delude myself to much I know what the country we live in is in general and who it was built on but I prefer to hope it will one day live up
to the standard it set for itself in principles. I am deluded but there can always be hope and getting rid of torture would be a good first
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I'm just arguing that the founders were realists.
Many of them were probably involved in tarring
and feathering of torries. They probably wouldn't
be squeamish about a bit of torture.
Mass produced torture, as it is done now,
would bother them though, I suspect. Then
again, so would McDonald's. :laugh:
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Hay they got casinos out of it
Er. Not a tradeoff I'd want to take.
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The mass produced torture as you call it gets little if any usable results.
Then again I am not so much against the bizarre stuff they did at abu ghraib with the nude pyramids and that lady laughing and pointing at their dicks
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Hay they got casinos out of it
Er. Not a tradeoff I'd want to take.
Well it wasn't like anybody in there immediate families had to deal with the shit
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I was mentally tortured by the British education system for 5 years
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The Polish education system is a much worse torture.
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Depends on the person
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Hay they got casinos out of it
Er. Not a tradeoff I'd want to take.
Well it wasn't like anybody in there immediate families had to deal with the shit
What do you mean? I thought Calandale was referring to the fact that the natives were double-crossed, killed, and systematically driven out of their lands.
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Hay they got casinos out of it
Er. Not a tradeoff I'd want to take.
Well it wasn't like anybody in there immediate families had to deal with the shit
What do you mean? I thought Calandale was referring to the fact that the natives were double-crossed, killed, and systematically driven out of their lands.
They were a long time ago about when my ancestors had the same thing happen to them when they were driven out of Ireland
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The mass produced torture as you call it gets little if any usable results.
I dunno. One hears contradictory evidence.
Then again I am not so much against the bizarre stuff they did at abu ghraib with the nude pyramids and that lady laughing and pointing at their dicks
Though, those suffering it likely would have preferred
being waterboarded. Is keeping our 'consciences' clean
more important than not being crueler?
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Polski education system can make someone go insane.
Although the teachers are fun to fuck around with.
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They were a long time ago about when my ancestors had the same thing happen to them when they were driven out of Ireland
Ah - didn't realize you were defending your own ancestors.
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They were a long time ago about when my ancestors had the same thing happen to them when they were driven out of Ireland
Not exactly the same. The Irish were persecuted largely for religious reasons.
Not just whom they were, IIRC. Moreover, they didn't have a sovereign government,
who made solemn treaties which were then broken. Still, there are similarities. Ethnic
cleansing and all. And, it just wasn't considered a big deal then.
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Back then if you where not of the right background you where not considered human anyway
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Polish people were always persecuted in history.
They always had their land taken from them.
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The mass produced torture as you call it gets little if any usable results.
I dunno. One hears contradictory evidence.
Then again I am not so much against the bizarre stuff they did at abu ghraib with the nude pyramids and that lady laughing and pointing at their dicks
Though, those suffering it likely would have preferred
being waterboarded. Is keeping our 'consciences' clean
more important than not being crueler?
Cruel is a matter of prospective
I'd import ham and beer for all their meals :zoinks:
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Back then if you where not of the right background you where not considered human anyway
I don't know how different it is now.
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Polish people were always persecuted in history.
They always had their land taken from them.
Bullshit. If they hadn't seized so damned MUCH of it,
they wouldn't have turned into such a political mess.
Poland was dismembered for its political instability, not
because of any persecution (I'm not talking about the
brief WWII interlude here, which wasn't really about
persecution either).
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Back then if you where not of the right background you where not considered human anyway
I don't know how different it is now.
We like to pretend it is but for many sadly it isn't
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Cruel is a matter of prospective
I'd import ham and beer for all their meals :zoinks:
You know, the Christian pogroms did similar stuff,
and are now viewed as ethnic cleansing.
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What about the partitions of Poland?
I mean, at one point it even stopped existing on the map.
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Cruel is a matter of prospective
I'd import ham and beer for all their meals :zoinks:
You know, the Christian pogroms did similar stuff,
and are now viewed as ethnic cleansing.
if they want to live they have plenty of food and wouldn't be cleansed
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Cruel is a matter of prospective
I'd import ham and beer for all their meals :zoinks:
You know, the Christian pogroms did similar stuff,
and are now viewed as ethnic cleansing.
if they want to live they have plenty of food and wouldn't be cleansed
Talk about repudiating the best in human nature.
Sounds like something Stalin could have said about
the collective farms. Or anyone from the inquisition.
There are things more important than life to some.
Frankly, I see that as noble. I can't assure myself that
I am so, but I sure the hell am not about to disparage
those who do.
Far better than most in the US, I'd presume. I don't care
if they are misguided.
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I do have a mean streak that runs rather deep and can be very harsh at times
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Is it more noble to violate the standards of
decency for some 'purpose' or merely for pleasure?
I prefer the latter.
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Is it more noble to violate the standards of
decency for some 'purpose' or merely for pleasure?
I prefer the latter.
I'm with you on that one :laugh:
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Pleasure is a purpose.
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So, one shouldn't be incensed about the 'threat'
and value torture for it, but rather, merely appreciate
the look of pleasure on the torturer's face.
I thought that girl in the pics was kinda hot.
Until they showed her in other circumstances.
Kinda reminds me of how I feel about some
musicians.
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Pleasure is a purpose.
As is aesthetics. But, these get short shift
in real world discussions. Perhaps they are
the more important.
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I don't think so. I don't see pleasure as separate from any kind of "real" world. Nor are aesthetics.
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Governments do.
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How so?
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They value things like economic considerations
and political and military ones much more highly.
There are few laws passed merely for 'happiness'.
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What happened to the right to the pursuit of happiness?
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But that's merely the pursuit.
We should be mandating it. >:D
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Give me a few days and I will get you to sign a confession that you killed Kennedy
lol only if I were old enough. Haven't gotten a hold of time travel yet.
That is irrelevant you would still sign it
I doubt it, as I am not that trusting IRL. I have serious trust issues with certain things, my signature is just one of them (you could ask the guy who sold me my car that). That comes from things in my childhood though. I freely divulge a good deal of personal information though.
Peter: What I advocate is not reality, there is no perfection. My ideals will not be met most likely. I am sure Scotland Yard has never tortured someone, ok lol. I would like it if police did not torture, but it is just a part of the reality of things. The actual battlefield is a different matter entirely to me.
I do want the Running Man as that is a competition with the illusion of someone getting money at the end. That also would not account for enough deaths. I would like it if there was enough death that we would greatly overcome the birthrate, which would be much more than you could realistically televise. Still, I think I would greatly enjoy watching a Gladitorial sport made for the new age. That would not be my chosen method of mass death as it would take too much time and not be efficient.
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Days were the issue, not trust.
Indeed, signing something that
ridiculous would seem an easy
way to end the torture.
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Peter: What I advocate is not reality, there is no perfection. My ideals will not be met most likely. I am sure Scotland Yard has never tortured someone, ok lol. I would like it if police did not torture, but it is just a part of the reality of things. The actual battlefield is a different matter entirely to me.
Do you think that torture really helps in 'the battlefield'? There's a film called 'El crimen de Cuenca', which depicts the real life story of a pair of men in Spain who were tortured into confessing to the murder of a man who had disappeared. After spending 11 years in prison and narrowly escaping execution by slow strangulation with a garrotte, the man they supposedly murdered was found living in a nearby town. If people can be tortured into confessing to a murder they didn't do, knowing that it would result in a long imprisonment or brutal execution, how reliable can the information it produces from terrorism suspects be?
On 21 August 1910, in the small town of Osa de la Vega, in the province of Cuenca, Jose Maria Grimaldos, known as «El Cepa», is seen for the last time on the road to the nearby village of Tresjuncos and then disappears.
His family fear foul play and report it to the Guardia Civil (police). In the subsequent judicial investigation the family and others express their suspicions that two men, Gregorio Valero and Leon Sanchez had killed him for his money. This first case is closed in September 1911 without any indictments.
In 1913 a new, young and overzealous, judge by the name of Isasa arrives. Influenced by the local boss and right-wing politician, judge Isasa decides to reopen the case. The two suspects are arrested by the Guardia Civil and, under torture, confess to having killed the man and destroyed the body. The fiscal (district attorney) asks for the death penalty for both accused men. The case takes its time in the court system and finally, on 25 may 1918 a popular jury declares the two men guilty of murder and they are both sentenced to 18 years in prison. They are both released on account of a general pardon on 20 February 1924 having served a total of eleven years each.
Two years later, in early 1926, it is discovered by chance that the reputed victim, Jose Maria Grimaldos, «El Cepa», was alive and had been living in a nearby town. At this moment the ugly truth is exposed and the innocence of the convicted men becomes evident.
With much legal difficulty, the case is reopened and, after much delay and going all the way to the Supreme Court, the convictions are overturned.
Franco’s fascist Spain, unconscionable torture, Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer and the utter repulsiveness of their political hackwork.
Why is Senator
Schumer smiling?
During the “transition†from Generalissimo Franco’s fascist dictatorship to democracy after the dictator’s death, filmmakers in Spain still had to be careful what they did.
It was known that people had suffered brutal torture in Franco’s dungeons, and that in 1975, a young student who later was found to be innocent, had suffered the awful form of Franco’s capital punishment – death by slow strangulation using a garrote.
One still didn’t come straight out in Spain under the fascists and talk about such incidents – not even for a while after Franco was dead.
Speaking in code of torture
Instead, in 1975, director Pilar Miro directed a movie about another case of false accusation and torture that occurred in 1910. But this was a subterfuge. People in Spain understood what other event the film might parallel.
Entitled El Crimen de Cuenca, the film tells the story of two peasants who were accused of murder. There were no witnesses to the so-called murder and no physical evidence against the men at all. There wasn't even evidence that a murder had occurred. Consequently, a hard line prosecutor who derided his predecessor for being “a liberal†suggested to the police that they somehow or other get a confession out of the two men.
Torture so brutal it’s painful to watch
What followed – I saw the film this weekend at the Museum of Modern Art in New York – was difficult to watch. It involved not only brutal beatings, but also techniques – shall we call them “rough interrogation?†– such as hammering wedges of wood under fingernails, ripping off fingernails with a pair of pliers, “strangulation†of testicles, and “non physical rough treatment†such as denying water to the parched victims.
Not surprisingly, the two peasants eventually gave the police the confessions that the prosecutor wanted. However, the two confessions weren’t consistent with each other.
Moreover, a police theory about where the men had hidden the body, which the brutalized peasants parroted after sufficient torture in a police dungeon, yielded no body.
Finally, the police concocted a theory that the bones of the alleged murder victim had been burned, pulverized and scattered, accounting for the inability to find his remains. The peasants then were made to confess that this new theory was in fact what had happened. Eight years later, the murder “victim†showed up alive and well, and the two falsely accused peasants, who had been spared death at the garrote by a last minute plea deal, went free.
Like the Inquisition and Franco Spain
– except that it’s happening today
What’s remarkable about this film, now more than 21 years old, is how pertinent it is to the current debate over torture presided over or done at the behest of Americans in Iraq and elsewhere. The Cuenca case supports with an historical case study the claim that torture produces, at best, highly unreliable intelligence.
Torture someone enough, by any of a variety of methods, and your victim eventually will tell you what he thinks you want to hear. Anything to stop the pain. That is true of torture whether it happened in Spain before and during the Franco era, or in some secret CIA dungeon today.
Relying on the unreliable
Relying on completely unreliable torture techniques such as waterboarding for intelligence may help explain why after six years, the Bush administration has still failed to capture Osama Bin Laden. Or why, in the pursuit of terrorists in Iraq, we’ve managed many times to massacre innocent civilians instead while the intended target somehow "got away."
Just as bad – and perhaps more horrifying to us as Americans – is the sly acknowledgment that we torture people even as we deny it. (Officially we don’t torture people but we can’t or won’t confirm that we don’t waterboard them or that waterboarding is torture. Wink wink.)
Horrifying, brutal and coy
Judge Michael Mukasey, who now seems inevitable as the next U.S. Attorney General, took an even more outrageously coy stance in his U.S. Attorney General confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in effect saying that he couldn’t speak to torture by waterboarding because he doesn’t know what waterboarding is. If true, he may be the only person in the United States who hasn’t heard all about it.
It has come to the point where you simply don’t expect more from Bush administration nominees, not to mention the President himself. In the end, history will remember them primarily as a bunch of thugs and accomplices of grand larcenists who funneled money from the U.S. Treasury into the big business equivalent of racketeering scams. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to fear that they will find company on the other end of the political spectrum
Two nauseating senators
– sad to say, both Democrats
What I find nauseating is that the likes of Senators Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein, both Democrats, would in effect wink at some the worst human behavior mankind has committed short of mass extermination.
One day, some American kid in uniform will suffer similar torture. The justification the enemy uses will be that the Americans have been doing the same thing for years.
Schumer adds to the outrage by declaring, according to the New York Times, that he “had obtained Mr. Mukasey’s promise to enforce laws that banned any of the harsh interrogation methods known to have been used on Queda terrorists….â€
That “promise†from a man who refuses to answer similarly under oath before a U.S. Senate committee isn’t worth the piece of paper it’s not written on. And the Schumer statement itself all but screeches with escape clause weasels.
I have made it a practice until now to avoid heaping negative criticism on Democrats on this blog. They suffer, frequently and unfairly at the hands of right wing bloggers, commentators and editorial writers.
But I find it unfathomable that Schumer and Feinstein have agreed to confirm Mukasey. Perhaps somebody offered them a bone – funds for their states that the Bush administration will decide not to block, for example. Or perhaps – since their reasons for confirmation are so incredible I am forced to imagine a reason – they made an agreement not to reveal some skeletons someone has found in their political closets.
If so, they have made a deal with the devil, and the fruit their deal will bear will be brutal torture in some Franco-like CIA or CIA proxy dungeon.
Odious political hacks
You can compromise over matters like taxes, water rights or criminal penalties. But there is a certain moral place where decent people ought to draw a line and say, "I will not agree to let this to happen." If there ever was a matter that shouted against compromising, it's the matter of torture.
Sad to say, Senators Schumer and Feinstein have revealed their true nature and the truth about them is both surprising and unpleasant.
They are both odious little political hacks.
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
Have you ever been held under water? My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool. I am for everything torture related as far as combatants go. If you pick up a gun with the intention to fight on the battlefield, your nervous system is fair game. You just volunteered for me to bash your toes with a hammer and stick hot pins in your face to get any strategy I want from you on the battlefield.
War is not a sport and it is not a game. Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place. The Geneva convention is bullshit. Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).
QFT!
Do you think terrorists have a code of conduct? Hell no. They wouldn't even view what we do to get information as "torture", can you see them ever posting a video of a captive being dunked in water as having any inpact? No. They slice peoples heads off with a usually sharp but sometimes dull knife. The reason this war has taken so long and cost so many lives is the rules were are shackeled with.
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
Have you ever been held under water? My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool. I am for everything torture related as far as combatants go. If you pick up a gun with the intention to fight on the battlefield, your nervous system is fair game. You just volunteered for me to bash your toes with a hammer and stick hot pins in your face to get any strategy I want from you on the battlefield.
War is not a sport and it is not a game. Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place. The Geneva convention is bullshit. Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).
QFT!
Do you think terrorists have a code of conduct? Hell no. They wouldn't even view what we do to get information as "torture", can you see them ever posting a video of a captive being dunked in water as having any inpact? No. They slice peoples heads off with a usually sharp but sometimes dull knife. The reason this war has taken so long and cost so many lives is the rules were are shackeled with.
Do you think torture is an effective tactic in the advancement of US goals? Or do you just like the idea of making terrorists suffer?
Now to the issue: There is a consituency of frustrated Americans, in and out of government, who want to believe that waterboarding or the like works. They want to get even with the enemy; to avenge the losses of 9-11; and obtain information to prevent a repeat. Or they want to eliminate the "terrorists" in Iraq who beheaded our citizens and who use indiscriminant, "cowardly" tactics to kill our troops and Iraqi civilians, and they think that this is one way to accomplish this goal. To such folks, "taking off the gloves" has an emotional appeal to it. The foe are animals; they don't deserve to be treated with respect they don't give to our guys. To such armchair warfighters, things like waterboarding pose tempting shortcuts to get the information we need to save American lives. In addition, the person who might bite on such an approach is able to turn to many authority figures and role models who will reassure him that this is the way to go, whereas those experienced intelligence professionals who can give many reasons to counter the appeal of these techniques tend not to hold the spotlight.
. . . Now stir in a heavy dose of persuasive drama in shows like "24," which show the American hero brutalizing prisoners and invariably getting the hot intelligence he needs to save a city in a matter of moments (not counting the break for a commercial). How persuasive is that to many viewers? I can tell you that it was certainly persuasive to some young Army interrogators I taught last year at Ft. Sam Houston. . . .
Almost no one who has interrogated people would deny that there could be this or that specific case wherein some kind of torture or coercive tactic might cause a prisoner with a low threshhold of pain, or who has faltering loyalty to his cause, to cough up valid information. That is always possible. Anyone can conjure up a construct that would show a harsh tactic as effective in a specific case.
But this does not make the tactic right, legal, morally correct, wise for our country's policy, effective, or defensible, and such a hypothetical does not begin to compensate for the damage done to our country and its stance as a "shining city on a hill" when our people stoop to the kinds of conduct that we have condemned over history when practiced by the Gestapo, the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Islamists, or whomever.
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
Have you ever been held under water? My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool. I am for everything torture related as far as combatants go. If you pick up a gun with the intention to fight on the battlefield, your nervous system is fair game. You just volunteered for me to bash your toes with a hammer and stick hot pins in your face to get any strategy I want from you on the battlefield.
War is not a sport and it is not a game. Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place. The Geneva convention is bullshit. Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).
QFT!
Do you think terrorists have a code of conduct? Hell no. They wouldn't even view what we do to get information as "torture", can you see them ever posting a video of a captive being dunked in water as having any inpact? No. They slice peoples heads off with a usually sharp but sometimes dull knife. The reason this war has taken so long and cost so many lives is the rules were are shackeled with.
Do you think torture is an effective tactic in the advancement of US goals? Or do you just like the idea of making terrorists suffer?
Now to the issue: There is a consituency of frustrated Americans, in and out of government, who want to believe that waterboarding or the like works. They want to get even with the enemy; to avenge the losses of 9-11; and obtain information to prevent a repeat. Or they want to eliminate the "terrorists" in Iraq who beheaded our citizens and who use indiscriminant, "cowardly" tactics to kill our troops and Iraqi civilians, and they think that this is one way to accomplish this goal. To such folks, "taking off the gloves" has an emotional appeal to it. The foe are animals; they don't deserve to be treated with respect they don't give to our guys. To such armchair warfighters, things like waterboarding pose tempting shortcuts to get the information we need to save American lives. In addition, the person who might bite on such an approach is able to turn to many authority figures and role models who will reassure him that this is the way to go, whereas those experienced intelligence professionals who can give many reasons to counter the appeal of these techniques tend not to hold the spotlight.
. . . Now stir in a heavy dose of persuasive drama in shows like "24," which show the American hero brutalizing prisoners and invariably getting the hot intelligence he needs to save a city in a matter of moments (not counting the break for a commercial). How persuasive is that to many viewers? I can tell you that it was certainly persuasive to some young Army interrogators I taught last year at Ft. Sam Houston. . . .
Almost no one who has interrogated people would deny that there could be this or that specific case wherein some kind of torture or coercive tactic might cause a prisoner with a low threshhold of pain, or who has faltering loyalty to his cause, to cough up valid information. That is always possible. Anyone can conjure up a construct that would show a harsh tactic as effective in a specific case.
But this does not make the tactic right, legal, morally correct, wise for our country's policy, effective, or defensible, and such a hypothetical does not begin to compensate for the damage done to our country and its stance as a "shining city on a hill" when our people stoop to the kinds of conduct that we have condemned over history when practiced by the Gestapo, the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Islamists, or whomever.
That's where you have so missunderstood this topic. The US does NOT torture captives. You don't understand the definition of torture. I wouldn't be in favor of branding terrorists with hot irons, just to make them suffer. Only a saddist would want that. But waterboarding is not torture. So what are you really asking?
BTW, I think shooting someone with a high powered rifle is worse to do to someone (more painfull, leaves a person crippled or dead) than waterboarding, but no one on the planet has ever complained that using a gun in battle is so horribly wrong... So it stands to reason, that if using a gun on a person is worse than waterboarding, and no one complains about using a gun in battle, then they must therefore be infavor of anything less violent than shooting someone.
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I find it disturbing how many Americans on forums are actually in favour of torture.
Have you ever been held under water? My uncle (family bully) was quite fond of doing that to us kids in the family pool. I am for everything torture related as far as combatants go. If you pick up a gun with the intention to fight on the battlefield, your nervous system is fair game. You just volunteered for me to bash your toes with a hammer and stick hot pins in your face to get any strategy I want from you on the battlefield.
War is not a sport and it is not a game. Stop being naive and trying to apply rules that shouldn't be there in the first place. The Geneva convention is bullshit. Although I am admittedly in favour of outright butchery instead of traditional warfare (gentlemen's code of stupidity).
QFT!
Do you think terrorists have a code of conduct? Hell no. They wouldn't even view what we do to get information as "torture", can you see them ever posting a video of a captive being dunked in water as having any inpact? No. They slice peoples heads off with a usually sharp but sometimes dull knife. The reason this war has taken so long and cost so many lives is the rules were are shackeled with.
Do you think torture is an effective tactic in the advancement of US goals? Or do you just like the idea of making terrorists suffer?
Now to the issue: There is a consituency of frustrated Americans, in and out of government, who want to believe that waterboarding or the like works. They want to get even with the enemy; to avenge the losses of 9-11; and obtain information to prevent a repeat. Or they want to eliminate the "terrorists" in Iraq who beheaded our citizens and who use indiscriminant, "cowardly" tactics to kill our troops and Iraqi civilians, and they think that this is one way to accomplish this goal. To such folks, "taking off the gloves" has an emotional appeal to it. The foe are animals; they don't deserve to be treated with respect they don't give to our guys. To such armchair warfighters, things like waterboarding pose tempting shortcuts to get the information we need to save American lives. In addition, the person who might bite on such an approach is able to turn to many authority figures and role models who will reassure him that this is the way to go, whereas those experienced intelligence professionals who can give many reasons to counter the appeal of these techniques tend not to hold the spotlight.
. . . Now stir in a heavy dose of persuasive drama in shows like "24," which show the American hero brutalizing prisoners and invariably getting the hot intelligence he needs to save a city in a matter of moments (not counting the break for a commercial). How persuasive is that to many viewers? I can tell you that it was certainly persuasive to some young Army interrogators I taught last year at Ft. Sam Houston. . . .
Almost no one who has interrogated people would deny that there could be this or that specific case wherein some kind of torture or coercive tactic might cause a prisoner with a low threshhold of pain, or who has faltering loyalty to his cause, to cough up valid information. That is always possible. Anyone can conjure up a construct that would show a harsh tactic as effective in a specific case.
But this does not make the tactic right, legal, morally correct, wise for our country's policy, effective, or defensible, and such a hypothetical does not begin to compensate for the damage done to our country and its stance as a "shining city on a hill" when our people stoop to the kinds of conduct that we have condemned over history when practiced by the Gestapo, the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Islamists, or whomever.
That's where you have so missunderstood this topic. The US does NOT torture captives. You don't understand the definition of torture. I wouldn't be in favor of branding terrorists with hot irons, just to make them suffer. Only a saddist would want that. But waterboarding is not torture. So what are you really asking?
BTW, I think shooting someone with a high powered rifle is worse to do to someone (more painfull, leaves a person crippled or dead) than waterboarding, but no one on the planet has ever complained that using a gun in battle is so horribly wrong... So it stands to reason, that if using a gun on a person is worse than waterboarding, and no one complains about using a gun in battle, then they must therefore be infavor of anything less violent than shooting someone.
What's your definition of torture? The rest of the world agrees that waterboarding is torture, pure and simple. What's required for you to accept something as torture? Hot irons and thumb screws? You could claim that nothing the US does counts as torture, but you'd be full of shit. As for shooting people, your argument would only be valid if waterboarding was a battlefield technique used to subdue the enemy. Once the enemy is captured and in your custody, shooting them is just as illegal as drowning them, whether or not it results in death. You can twist legal definitions all you want, until nobody is a prisoner of war and nothing is torture, but the rest of the world won't be fooled and they'll condemn you for it.
Last week, attorney general nominee Judge Michael Mukasey dodged the question of whether waterboarding terror suspects is necessarily torture. Americans can disagree as to whether or not this should disqualify him for the top job in the Justice Department. But they should be under no illusions about what waterboarding is.
As a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, I know the waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.
Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.
In the media, waterboarding is called "simulated drowning," but that's a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.
Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.
How much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.
Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia - meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.
The lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threatened with its use again and again. Call it "Chinese water torture," "the barrel," or "the waterfall." It is all the same.
One has to overcome basic human decency to endure causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you questioning the meaning of what it is to be an American.
Is there a place for the waterboard? Yes. It must go back to the realm of training our operatives, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines - to prepare for its uncontrolled use by our future enemies. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of Americans may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora's box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name ofprotecting America.
Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured.
Our own missteps have already created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda's own virtual school for terrorists.
I agree with Sen. John McCain. Waterboarding should never be used as an interrogation tool. It is beneath our values.
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Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on their back with the head inclined downward (the Trendelenburg position), and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages.[1] Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning and is made to believe that death is imminent.[2] In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex.[3] Although waterboarding does not always cause lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death.[4] The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last for years after the procedure.[5]
Waterboarding was used for interrogation at least as early as the Spanish Inquisition to obtain information,[6] coerce confessions, punish, and intimidate. It is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities, including legal experts,[4][7] politicians, war veterans,[8][9] intelligence officials,[10] military judges,[11] and human rights organizations.[12][13] Despite its long use as a technique, the first use of the actual term "waterboarding" occurred in the May 13, 2004, New York Times. In 2007 waterboarding led to a political scandal in the United States when the press reported that the CIA had waterboarded extrajudicial prisoners and that the Justice Department had authorized this procedure.[14][15] The CIA has admitted waterboarding Al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.[16]
Mental and physical effects
Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states, "[He] argued that it was indeed torture, 'Some victims were still traumatized years later', he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. 'The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience,' he said."[5] Keller also stated in his testimony before the Senate that "Water-boarding or mock drowning, where a prisoner is bound to an inclined board and water is poured over their face, inducing a terrifying fear of drowning clearly can result in immediate and long-term health consequences. As the prisoner gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive, with all of the physiologic and psychological responses expected, including an intense stress response, manifested by tachycardia (rapid heart beat) and gasping for breath. There is a real risk of death from actually drowning or suffering a heart attack or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water. Long term effects include panic attacks, depression and PTSD. I remind you of the patient I described earlier who would panic and gasp for breath whenever it rained even years after his abuse."[22]
In an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Human Rights Watch claimed that waterboarding can cause the sort of "severe pain" prohibited by 18 USC 2340 (the implementation in the United States of the United Nations Convention Against Torture), that the psychological effects can last long after waterboarding ends (another of the criteria under 18 USC 2340), and that uninterrupted waterboarding can ultimately cause death.[4]
If that doesn't count as torture, what the hell does?
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Owning me on ZDaemon. :p
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I would count it as torture actually. If our military questions its effectiveness and says it is "beneath our values", then why do they continue to use it? It has been used for centuries, with a different name. I am not in favor of taking prisoners in war btw. I would shoot anyone who surrendered lol. Probably would ask them what town they were from beforehand, then go and kill their entire family too. No surviving ancestors to take revenge or fight back in the name of said person. Basically take no prisoners and kill every human in sight is my recipe for war or butchery (whatever you want to call it).
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Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on their back with the head inclined downward (the Trendelenburg position), and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages.[1] Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning and is made to believe that death is imminent.[2] In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex.[3] Although waterboarding does not always cause lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death.[4] The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last for years after the procedure.[5]
Waterboarding was used for interrogation at least as early as the Spanish Inquisition to obtain information,[6] coerce confessions, punish, and intimidate. It is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities, including legal experts,[4][7] politicians, war veterans,[8][9] intelligence officials,[10] military judges,[11] and human rights organizations.[12][13] Despite its long use as a technique, the first use of the actual term "waterboarding" occurred in the May 13, 2004, New York Times. In 2007 waterboarding led to a political scandal in the United States when the press reported that the CIA had waterboarded extrajudicial prisoners and that the Justice Department had authorized this procedure.[14][15] The CIA has admitted waterboarding Al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.[16]
Mental and physical effects
Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states, "[He] argued that it was indeed torture, 'Some victims were still traumatized years later', he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. 'The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience,' he said."[5] Keller also stated in his testimony before the Senate that "Water-boarding or mock drowning, where a prisoner is bound to an inclined board and water is poured over their face, inducing a terrifying fear of drowning clearly can result in immediate and long-term health consequences. As the prisoner gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive, with all of the physiologic and psychological responses expected, including an intense stress response, manifested by tachycardia (rapid heart beat) and gasping for breath. There is a real risk of death from actually drowning or suffering a heart attack or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water. Long term effects include panic attacks, depression and PTSD. I remind you of the patient I described earlier who would panic and gasp for breath whenever it rained even years after his abuse."[22]
In an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Human Rights Watch claimed that waterboarding can cause the sort of "severe pain" prohibited by 18 USC 2340 (the implementation in the United States of the United Nations Convention Against Torture), that the psychological effects can last long after waterboarding ends (another of the criteria under 18 USC 2340), and that uninterrupted waterboarding can ultimately cause death.[4]
If that doesn't count as torture, what the hell does?
If you reeeaaallllllyyy want to know, I think putting someone in a jail cell, no matter how comfortable, is torture. There, you got it out of me you bastard! Don't be so cruel next time.
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Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on their back with the head inclined downward (the Trendelenburg position), and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages.[1] Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning and is made to believe that death is imminent.[2] In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex.[3] Although waterboarding does not always cause lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death.[4] The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last for years after the procedure.[5]
Waterboarding was used for interrogation at least as early as the Spanish Inquisition to obtain information,[6] coerce confessions, punish, and intimidate. It is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities, including legal experts,[4][7] politicians, war veterans,[8][9] intelligence officials,[10] military judges,[11] and human rights organizations.[12][13] Despite its long use as a technique, the first use of the actual term "waterboarding" occurred in the May 13, 2004, New York Times. In 2007 waterboarding led to a political scandal in the United States when the press reported that the CIA had waterboarded extrajudicial prisoners and that the Justice Department had authorized this procedure.[14][15] The CIA has admitted waterboarding Al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.[16]
Mental and physical effects
Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states, "[He] argued that it was indeed torture, 'Some victims were still traumatized years later', he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. 'The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience,' he said."[5] Keller also stated in his testimony before the Senate that "Water-boarding or mock drowning, where a prisoner is bound to an inclined board and water is poured over their face, inducing a terrifying fear of drowning clearly can result in immediate and long-term health consequences. As the prisoner gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive, with all of the physiologic and psychological responses expected, including an intense stress response, manifested by tachycardia (rapid heart beat) and gasping for breath. There is a real risk of death from actually drowning or suffering a heart attack or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water. Long term effects include panic attacks, depression and PTSD. I remind you of the patient I described earlier who would panic and gasp for breath whenever it rained even years after his abuse."[22]
In an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Human Rights Watch claimed that waterboarding can cause the sort of "severe pain" prohibited by 18 USC 2340 (the implementation in the United States of the United Nations Convention Against Torture), that the psychological effects can last long after waterboarding ends (another of the criteria under 18 USC 2340), and that uninterrupted waterboarding can ultimately cause death.[4]
If that doesn't count as torture, what the hell does?
If you reeeaaallllllyyy want to know, I think putting someone in a jail cell, no matter how comfortable, is torture. There, you got it out of me you bastard! Don't be so cruel next time.
If you or your family members were being tortured, I doubt you'd make light of it the way you're doing now.
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Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation' quoted from ABC news.
"The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding.
After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft."
This is good enough for me... Its Enhanced Interrogation of high value subjects, approved by America's top leadership, (of only 3 subjects) producing dramatic results.
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Wow, there are a lot of terrorist-loving America haters in here
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Wow, there are a lot of terrorist-loving America haters in here
I'm not a terrorist-loving America hater. I'm a terrorist-hating America hater.
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You are all aware that we torture our own soldiers,
using pretty much the same techniques as are used
against our enemies, in order to prepare them for them,
aren't you? :P
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Smart of us.
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oh noone else found that funny? *points to funballs fun rant* :zoinks:
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Smart of us.
Depends. We don't hit the average GI with
the whole battery, but MI gets it all. Even if they're
stationed in Florida, to listen in on cuban radio
transmissions. :laugh:
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Why does that make it depend? Do you think we train people in it who don't need to be trained and it causes harm or something?
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Why does that make it depend? Do you think we train people in it who don't need to be trained and it causes harm or something?
Yes. I don't think that we should reveal all
our techniques to so many. It violates the
'need to know' maxim. It's also not good for
PR.
Fuck - you're making me answer this as though
I was working. :laugh:
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I'm feeling intellectual. :P
If you believe in "need to know", then why do you have objections to Dunc's stonewalling?
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I'm feeling intellectual. :P
If you believe in "need to know", then why do you have objections to Dunc's stonewalling?
Big difference, I expected dunc to have some honor.
I don't expect any such from the US government.
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Why the difference?
I thought you were using the site as a political experiment.
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Why the difference?
I thought you were using the site as a political experiment.
1. Smaller group. Less rewards.
2. Even IF, I could still have some idealistic hopes, no?
But, in some ways, I've swum into water too deep for the issue.
While what I said was true, there's a problem with the connection
between the topics. I was giving the advice about the "smart of
us" line, as though I were analyzing the best practices of an administration
which wanted to conduct torture, in an environment where it was unpopular.
As though these things were given. Personally, I'm not sure what MY views
on torture are. It seems ugly, so I have a reaction against it. Evidence seems
to show mixed results as to efficacy. BUT, certain techniques are claimed to
be effective. Does a country have a right to use effective but ugly techniques?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure a country has a right to exist.
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Does a country have a right to use effective but ugly techniques?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure a country has a right to exist.
:laugh:
What's the argument in favor of countries not having a right to exist?
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Does a country have a right to use effective but ugly techniques?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure a country has a right to exist.
:laugh:
What's the argument in favor of countries not having a right to exist?
Well, they have a purpose of their own,
which seems to have little to do with those
supposedly forming the 'social contract' which
created them. Wars are almost the perfect example:
there have been few (if any) wars which should have
been fought - even defensive wars - from the point of
view of the masses.
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Here's where having a degree in art fucks me over, because I never learned the official term for - looking for a ghost in the machine? - the error of seeing an active intelligence behind a system just because the pattern hasn't been figured out yet.
I don't think a country should be treated as a sentient entity. But that gets into the questions of what is an individual.
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Here's where having a degree in art fucks me over, because I never learned the official term for - looking for a ghost in the machine? - the error of seeing an active intelligence behind a system just because the pattern hasn't been figured out yet.
I don't think a country should be treated as a sentient entity. But that gets into the questions of what is an individual.
The closest I can come is some form of anthropomorphizing, but that doesn't
seem specific enough.
Active intelligence is irrelevant. The point is purpose. Groups have purpose.
And collective interests, which may not coincide well with the interests
of their membership. Ah, there are those with power, bred by the government,
who have their own interests, and are collectively driving the actions, but such
things are too difficult to predict. Having general models for group behaviours is
necessary, just as behavior of gases doesn't try and predict every molecule.
So, since national governments are not serving the best interests of the
majority of the members, what right do they have?
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seriously? i didnt mean to kill the thread. whered everybody go? i was just venting. geez. was my shit too good? whatever. pussies.
I got bored.
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seriously? i didnt mean to kill the thread. whered everybody go? i was just venting. geez. was my shit too good? whatever. pussies.
I got bored.
Yes. and yes.
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There have been reports of torture and rape by US officials going back at least until WW2. Just because the mainstream media doesn't cover it, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Those who still see the US government as the world's benign watchdog and liberator rather than an evil imperialist should seriously get their heads out of their ass and start smelling the shit that's all around them.