Jump to content

Torture


idun
 Share

Recommended Posts

I was flabbergasted yesterday when I saw the news that the CIA had been torturing prisoners. Apparently Bush was not informed properly and given poor intelligence ( sorry I couldn't help saying that ). As we have heard that Blair was, in the past.

Now, I watch films at the cinema, on tv, tv films and series and in general it appears that prisoners who are thought to have been guilty of terrorism in these shows are not told that they are very bad and not to do it again after 1 minute per year time out on the naughty step and please will you tell us what you know. On these programs bad things happen, torture happens. And in spite of declarations from PM's and Presidents saying that they do not do these things, I have always believed that these things do happen. Fiction being more honest and 'real' than the nonsense and frankly lies and incompetence shown by our leaders.

Am I against torture, well, I wouldn't like it done to me, to be honest. But I always wonder what I would do to someone else, if say they had kidnapped my child and I had chance to 'interrogate' them. And I daresay in those circumstances, that I would be quite capable of doing something dire. Would I care if it were against any charter, I doubt it.

So no, I'm not shocked by these statements, they are stating something I believed to be happening anyway. However, I reckon that they were very dangerous 'truths' to admit to and by being 'honest' could end up with reprisals which will be far worse than the original 'crime'. As people from certain communities have been saying that these things happen anyway, the were perfectly aware, then how can this do other than whip up even more anti american and probably anti british fanaticism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why is this a surprise to you, it has been going on for ages especially at Guantanamo bay and includes several British and Australian nationals being tortured who have since sued the UK government for what happened to them. This is because they hold UK passports and therefore the UK has a certain 'duty of care' and should have bought them home.

Personally I think this report is more about limitation of damage "we take things seriously, we had an enquiry and we will punish somebody (as they now look for the fall guy)". The thing is I can't understand the stupidity (well perhaps I can) of the Americans to torture people on the basis they either had to make them 'disappear' afterwards or that once released they would tell the world what happened to them, why and by whom, therefore the world would find out. Of course this is all great news for China and North Korea. The Americans are constantly talking to them about their human rights so naturally China and North Korea are having a field day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I share you surprise that they published the report but of course there is apolitical motive. The report was produced by Democrat senators and. The torture occurred during a Republican period of office.

Personally I am opposed to the use of torture both on moral grounds and on the fact that it does not provide reliable information. People will say what they think the torturer wants to hear regardless of whether it is true or not. Other people will show great courage in staying silent.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote user="woolybanana"]What would the victims of 9/11 say if they had known that because of a failure to use all available means to get the information, they had died horrible deaths? Much as I disapprove of the idea of torture, it is inevitable that it will have to be used against those who wish us harm.[/quote]The report seems to indicate that very little if any useful information was obtained by torture. So to justify the use of torture to prevent atrocities seems to be wishful thinking.

Not only is torture immoral it seems also to be ineffective

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you will find that the knowledge of this torturing which is all part of the 'Rendition' program has been know for quite a while. Indeed in 2007 a film was made about how the CIA got hold of the wrong man. At least two UK citizens have tried to take MI5 to court on the basis that they benefited by their torture by the Americans. It turns out they knew nothing.

As has been said information gathered from torture is very unreliable. It's only 'reliable' use is on the day when a specific operation is actually taking place. When it is known that somebody has been abducted or captured who 'knew the plan' the plan is changed straight away and the only people who know what those changes will be are not in the field to be captured, nobody else knows. I can't speak for the army or navy but certainly in the RAF (as flight crew) you were told to try to 'hang on in there' for an hour or more if you can and then just tell them what you know as by that time everything you tell them will have been changed. The problem facing the individual is when to start giving the information, do it too early and the integrator will think what you are saying is untrue and continue torturing you. As one is told, only you know when the right time is to tell all. This is exactly what happened in the cases of John Nicol and John Peters in Iraq hence the pictures of their terrible beatings.

Does the enemies actions justify your use of torture, of course it doesn't, it makes you as bad as them. It also does not work, look at Russia in Afghanistan, they tortured and killed, whole villages in some cases but they still lost (OK so did we and the Americans, lose that is). Yes innocent people get killed by terrorists but how do you know if the person you are torturing is not also innocent and knows nothing.

But, the issue here is more about how America (and the UK who have also played their part) hold themselves above the rest by their 'morals' yet when it comes down to it they are no better than those they are fighting. America sees itself as the policemen of the world, to dish out law and order and to protect the weak and innocent. The only way I can express it is that they are total hypocrites. My mother had many sayings which I thought stupid and hated, one was 'be sure your sins will find you out' and for America thats what has happened and now they are trying to make it political by making this report public.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought it was because the UK (and a significant number of other countries, as I recall) were signatories to the United Nations Convention on Human Rights. This banned the use of torture. Now, it appears to be an 'option', or torture has had to be re-defined to avoid contravening the UN convention. One cannot condemn 'rogue' nations for using torture in a morally superior tone whilst actively using it oneself. If one does that, surely torture becomes universally 'acceptable'? Not on my watch, it does not.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, we can condemn rogue nations for using tyranny and torture. When there is a country where it's citizens are living under such a regime, then we can, we should.

Has there ever been a time in history when the power nations have been so 'soft'?  If there has, I would really like to know. And maybe the UN should try getting proper rights for the much of humanity? Maybe the power nations are easy cibles these days. Politicians sign stuff or say stuff and they don't mean it.......

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm against torture.

However, Idun makes a point. Look at the recent tortures and beheadings carried out by ISIS/ ISIL, or indeed 9/11. If we are to accept that the UN Convention is the benchmark by which "civilised" nations should abide, how do we, as members of these nations respond in order to obtain intelligence or information? How, for that matter, do we respond in terms of intervention or lack thereof? Do we leave them to get on with it? Do we accept that there will be, with or without any attempt on our part to garner information, the risk of terrorist attacks on our own countries? If we capture anyone who is likely to be able to help us prevent such attacks, do we put them in a nice hotel, ask them polite questions and offer them a nice cup of tea afterwards?

There are human rights and Human Rights, and the line is, IMO, very fuzzy. It's a line which saw the UK stuck for years with a bloke like Abu Qatada, because he was invoking them in order to allow him the right to family life and to protection from torture. Great, but as he was also using the right to free speech to actively encourage people to take up arms against the very country that was sheltering him, the human rights of the other 60-odd million people sharing the country with him remained under threat. Asking him nicely to stop, bunging him in prison etc., had little effect. Yet we were obliged to negotiate for him to return only on condition that his human rights were protected and that he not be tortured to obtain information likely to lead to his conviction, and now he's walking round a free man again, albeit not in the UK. A satisfactory outcome? Or an ongoing threat to the security and human rights of most of the population of the western world? Is that a victory, or a defeat for human rights? And for WHOSE human rights?

It's fundamentally wrong to torture people. Goes without saying. Probably each and every side that's doing it will argue that it's done for the greater good, that they're the "good guys" and that when the good guys do it, it's acceptable, whereas it becomes unacceptable in the hand of the bad guys.

Arguing against it is well and good, but can anyone tell me what they would propose as an acceptable alternative? I'll be honest, I can't answer that question.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote user="woolybanana"]To answer an earlier point, we can never know or be allowed to know if torture has been useful or not as that in itself would be too big a security risk.[/quote]

I think we can get a fair idea by looking at the UK. On it's own it does not use torture although it has benifited from and indeed visited some of the American centres where it has been carried out. If you then compare this 'lack' of torture to the 'success' rate of capturing indvidual terrorists or cells it would seem to indicate that you don't need torture as much as a good security system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From New Republic a US publication

In 2010, Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, testified in federal court about the known innocence of several Guantánamo prisoners. “It became apparent to me as early as August 2002, and probably earlier to other State Department personnel who were focused on these issues, that many of the prisoners detained at Guantanamo had been taken into custody without regard to whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all,” he said.

He continued, “We relied upon Afghans...and upon Pakistanis, to hand over prisoners whom they had apprehended or who had been turned over to them for bounties, sometimes as much as $5,000 per head. Such practices meant that the likelihood was high that some of the Guantánamo detainees had been turned in to U.S. forces to settle local scores, for tribal reasons, or just as a method of making money.”

Who is going to get US money today ?... UN convention on torture requires any prisoner tortured by a member state to be compensated ... A lot of money is going to have to be found when the claims start coming in .
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote user="NickP"]Having  murdered American journalist James Foley by removing his head, the Islamic State is now trying to profit from his death by selling his body for $1 million. Looks like the bogey men are going to give away some more money.

[/quote]

It does make you wonder why these people go there in the first place especially as they know what can happen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since 1945 a myth has prevailed about our (USA really) moral superiority over other societies

We suddenly discovered how outraged we were at the Nazi concentration camps and knew it couldn't happen here,

Communism was evil as we knew but later when Russia abandoned Communism it was, and still is, Russia that is evil.

Then the US discovered terrorism and we all jumped to attention because it was important and that IRA stuff in England and Ulster wasn't so bad really.

It has always been just propaganda.

A Russian journalist put it well.

"American propaganda is so much better than Russian propaganda because the American people actually believe it."
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suppose the real issue is the: if IS/North Korea/IRA et al were not signatories to the UN convention on human rights, so there are no sanctions against them. But what about USA/UK who were? Was it all rubbish? What did it mean? I am not naïve, but what is the moral point of the UN convention on human rights if signatories simply ignore it? We (UK/US/EU) either observe it, or accept a medieval anarchy, which I thought 'The West' were attempting to address? If we do not abide by treaties/agreements that we are signatories to, what is the point? We pick and choose? Is waterboarding torture? Discuss.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote user="Lingone"]I suppose the real issue is the: if IS/North Korea/IRA et al were not signatories to the UN convention on human rights, so there are no sanctions against them. But what about USA/UK who were? Was it all rubbish? What did it mean? I am not naïve, but what is the moral point of the UN convention on human rights if signatories simply ignore it? We (UK/US/EU) either observe it, or accept a medieval anarchy, which I thought 'The West' were attempting to address? If we do not abide by treaties/agreements that we are signatories to, what is the point? We pick and choose? Is waterboarding torture? Discuss.[/quote]

Well firstly you would not expect IS nor the IRA to sign up to the UN convention on human rights as neither represent or are a country, they are just a bunch of murderers and criminals.

As to the rest of your comments, well that’s the point isn't it and compounded even more by the fact that the US and UK were effectively the founding fathers of the UN. So the very people who setup the UN charter on human rights to ensure that there would be world peace and basic human rights for the world’s population are the very people who break the rules., hypocritical or what?

The other issue of course is the UK's implicitly in torture both directly and indirectly. For many years the UK sold instruments of torture all around the world and one of the biggest manufacturers of such equipment was Plessey Electronics who produced an electronic 'stick' which was basically a cattle prod type device. Many of these were sold by the thousands to African, Middle East and Asian countries. They also sold, along with Siemens surveillance cameras which were used to great effect in indentifying protesters in Tiananmen Square. They claimed these were 'stock items' and never intended to be used as torture instruments or for the suppression people’s human rights. Strange that when you see they sent teams of engineers out to install the units and instruct the Chinese military (not the police) on using them.

Basically if you’re going to try and hold the moral high ground you have to be ‘whiter than white’ and the US and UK are not which in turn makes them look a bit stupid. Then on the other hand I would think they are not the only ones, they are just the suckers who got caught.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems they think they covered their backs years ago,

From GVH Live

Post-9/11, when the Bush administration first authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees, the Justice Department penned a series of memos detailing their legal justification for the use of these interrogation practices.

A February 2002 memo, for instance, stated that Al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees were not protected from torture by the Geneva Convention. This order was extended to cover all detainees held as part of the War on Terror in 2006.

Also in 2002, John Yoo, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States, and Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee provided the White House with a set of legal memos claiming enhanced interrogation techniques were not severe enough to be considered torture, and therefore the U.S. could not be punished for using them. The memos also stated that actions taken outside of U.S. soil, including at the detention center at Guatanamo Bay, were not subjected to U.S. laws banning torture.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...