[aldo_14]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4996140.stm

A US court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a German citizen who says he was kidnapped and beaten by the CIA.
...
 However, the district court judge in Virginia rejected the challenge, saying Mr el-Masri's "private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets".
...
In his ruling, Judge TS Ellis stressed that by rejecting Mr el-Masri's lawsuit he made no judgement on the strength or otherwise of his allegations.

"[The result reached here] is in no way an adjudication of, or comment on, the merit or lack of merit of Mr el-Masri's complaint," he said.

"Further, it is also important that nothing in this ruling should be taken as a sign of judicial approval or disapproval of rendition programmes.

"In times of war, our country, chiefly through the executive branch, must often take exceptional steps to thwart the enemy."

Does that mean that the US courts officially don't care about torture or kidnapping of people, so long as the government claims it is for security purposes?  Because what the latter (quoted) section indicates, to me, is a carte blanche to break US and international law provided it is justified by some claim, however spurious, of 'security'.

[an0n]

If they ruled against it, it would have to stop.

If they ruled for it, there'd be a riot.

So they're just pretending like the question was never raised and running away.

[Kosh]

Anon hit the nail on the head.


Wait a moment, isn't the US that country that says torture is bad?

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah but we never said don't do it.

[achtung]

Question.  What country doesn't?

[Mefustae]

Question.  What country doesn't?

Point, but most countries don't denounce it while torturing people.

[Nuke]

is he that guy that was on 60 minutes? the one where the government ****ed up, kidnapped the wrong person, beat him for 2 years and then said they had made a mistake, then left him on a desert roar in the middle of nowhere? i mean its one thing to beat the crap out of somone to protect your government. but its another thing to not take responsibility for your misakes. uncle sam should at least write hm a quarter million dollar check and wish him on his way. they know they ****ed up, but they coulda dne something about it.

[IceFire]

Torture is never legitimate and has been proven over and over to be a bad intelligence gathering tool.  its the worst one you can employ.

[Flipside]

It's not the judges' job to define what is in the countries best interests, it's the government's job. What he should have done was his job, which was to judge whether a law was broken or not, the government the decides whether there were mitigating circumstances in case of security.

The only way I can see this happening is if the judge was told to drop the case. Either that or I'd be very concened about the abilities of that judge to deliver judgements of law.

Either way, torture is torture in my books, and it is an evil thing to do regardless of who is doing it or why. You cannot torture someone in order to get your hands on people who use violence and fear, because, through your methods, you have just become those very same people.

[Ace]

It's not the judges' job to define what is in the countries best interests, it's the government's job. What he should have done was his job, which was to judge whether a law was broken or not, the government the decides whether there were mitigating circumstances in case of security.

Problem is the whole climate of "if you actually obey the law you're an activist judge!"

[ilya]

Torture is never legitimate and has been proven over and over to be a bad intelligence gathering tool.  its the worst one you can employ.

Alright, here's a good way to get information from people without hurting them, or anyone one bit: nitrous oxide, or another gas used for anesthesia.

Right when a person wakes up from surgery they can be led to believe/say anything. If you're worried about terrorists, administer some anesthesia and have someone speak to them in their language and convince them that they are talking to the leader of the terrorist block. Then you can get all the information you want. Of course, this can't be used in a court of law, because you can make a person say anything, but for intelligence gathering, it should work fine.

[aldo_14]

Torture is never legitimate and has been proven over and over to be a bad intelligence gathering tool.  its the worst one you can employ.

Alright, here's a good way to get information from people without hurting them, or anyone one bit: nitrous oxide, or another gas used for anesthesia.

Right when a person wakes up from surgery they can be led to believe/say anything. If you're worried about terrorists, administer some anesthesia and have someone speak to them in their language and convince them that they are talking to the leader of the terrorist block. Then you can get all the information you want. Of course, this can't be used in a court of law, because you can make a person say anything, but for intelligence gathering, it should work fine.

Trouble is that any substance which has that effect is unpredictable as to the reliability of anything said, because it's brain altering/affecting.

[IceFire]

Torture is never legitimate and has been proven over and over to be a bad intelligence gathering tool.  its the worst one you can employ.

Alright, here's a good way to get information from people without hurting them, or anyone one bit: nitrous oxide, or another gas used for anesthesia.

Right when a person wakes up from surgery they can be led to believe/say anything. If you're worried about terrorists, administer some anesthesia and have someone speak to them in their language and convince them that they are talking to the leader of the terrorist block. Then you can get all the information you want. Of course, this can't be used in a court of law, because you can make a person say anything, but for intelligence gathering, it should work fine.

That screws things up quite a bit too.  Sure there may be a fairly unfiltered stream of thoughts for a little while but there's no guarantee that its actually going to be coherent or even useful.  The best way for the human mind to give information is to convince said human mind to do so.  I'm sure there is subtleties to this but impaitence is what leads to torture and drugging and all of that stuff.  We should hold ourselves to a far higher standard than our enemies.