[krisvek]

first, the UN isnt all good...not by far....it is by no means a shining example of goodness (food for oil....grrr...)

to the point...plain and simple, vengeance and revenge is wrong.   those prisoners should not have been treated like they were....stooping down to their level (assuming that atleast SOME of those thousands is actually part of the terror organization thing) is pitiful

the only good, rightous way is the way of "turning the other cheek"....they murder and kill....you do your best to stop them from doing so, but you do NOT return the favor;  the goal is to stop their actions, and those particular treatments did little to accomplish such (likely only spurred more)

there is nothing that cant be accomplished through good, civil means that can be accomplished through crueler methods (aka, there is a good way to do everything);  patience is the key

[Bobboau]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Do the ends justify the means?

yes.

[krisvek]

realistically, yes, the ends often to justify the means..doesnt mean it's right, of course, and doesnt mean there wasnt a better way...but to reach a goal through any particular mean, justifies that mean
(other than something absurd...like...killing yourself because you have a headache or something)

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Liberator


You refuse to admit that there is a difference between Interogation and Torture.  Also, those bloody "regulations" basically say that you can ask questions but it's the choice of the prisoner to answer or not.  That's a waste of time.  Sure it's not okay to intentially injure a prision in the course of questioning, but denying them sleep or peace in order to weaken their will doesn't injure them.  It only makes them uncomfortable for a short period of time.

Firstly; stay up for around, ooh, a week straight (with the aid of constant beatings, being soaked in water, having no bed and finally high-decibel white noise played at you) and say it's just 'uncomfortable'.

Secondly; there is a difference between interrogation and torture.  The difference is that one involves inflicting physical or mental harm.  Attempting to move the goalposts to justify torture in many ways equivalent to what took place under Saddam is reprehensible and wrong IMHO.

Thirdly; Not only is denial of food a basic violation of human rights under all kinds of acts relating to both war and peace - signed by the US may I add - we're not talking denying a meal here and there, we're talking planned and calculated starvation.

Originally posted by Liberator
Okay, since were on the "UN is God and Knows All" bent:

So you guys would be okay with chemical inducment(sodium pentethol and the like) then?

Nope.  Also a form of torture unless voluntary (due to the side-effects of the drugs, and also potential long term damage or death, as has happened in trials of so-called 'truth' drugs).  

Particularly as the aforementioned drugs are ineffective (often are sedatives, hallucinogens and/or barbituates), and  public studies have revealed that those 'interrogated' under the influence of such often mix fact and fiction; the only actual reason for effectiveness would be the belief of the subject that they cannot lie under the influence.

Originally posted by Liberator
How exactly are interorgators supposed to extract information from uncooperative prisoners?

Using humane and legal methods with regards to the basic human rights we accord to all civillians, whether accused of a crime, convicted or a crime, or simply being questioned in a police station or court of law.

Essentially, to the same rights you would expect for yourself as an individual picked up on the street by police.  If you would accept US police picking you up, and performing some or all of the aformentioned abuses (how about a start of being forced to wet yourself and crawl on the floor whilst being spat on, then forced to strip naked, then shoved in a 2-metre square cell and denied bedding, food or sleep for several days, before being drenched and then 'interrogated' by an officer claiming how happy he is to beat the **** out of you?).

EDIT; incidentally, I'd just like to re-emphasise that torture is not a valid form of interrogation because it does not deliver reliable information.   Just look at Sandy Mitchell, a Scot who was tortured in Saudi Arabia into confessing guilt for a series of bombs (which most attribute to Islamic militants - a problem the Saudis wanted to cover up via blaming a westerner).

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Liberator
Okay, since were on the "UN is God and Knows All" bent:

Setting up a strawman. No one said anything of the sort. The closest that anyone has come to that is demanding that the US keep up with the Geneva convention which it actually signed.

When US soldiers were shown on Iraqi TV after capture the US was the first to complain about Geneva convention abuses. Yet they can do it to anyone they want to just because it's a valid interrogation technique.

I suggest you go find one of the US servicemen who was paraded on Iraqi TV during the opening stages of the war and tell him that whatever his captors did to him was a valid interrogation technique to discover US troop movements.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by karajorma


Setting up a strawman. No one said anything of the sort. The closest that anyone has come to that is demanding that the US keep up with the Geneva convention which it actually signed.
 

Not just the Geneva convention, though; all manner of UN human rights conventions also apply.  In particular, there is no clause which would free the US from having to apply Geneva Convention / human rights to 'illegal combatants'.

[Ford Prefect]

How exactly are interorgators supposed to extract information from uncooperative prisoners?

Perhaps they might have to accept that they're not going to get any information out of them.

[Flipside]

Well, it makes sense really, you arrest someone in, say, Michigan for suspected Murder and they deny it. Simple answer, torture them, in a non-physically damaging way, until they do admit.

This would also be good for finding witches, werewolves, icons of lucifer, adulterers etc etc etc

[krisvek]

you can get anybody to admit to anything if you torture them enough :-/

[Liberator]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect

Perhaps they might have to accept that they're not going to get any information out of them.

And then people die, just to protect you delicate little sensibilities.

Let's understand something, I'm advocating the denial of sleep and peace of mind as methods of lowering the will to lie, not breaking limbs or injuring someone.  It's 2 different things.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Liberator
Let's understand something, I'm advocating the denial of sleep and peace of mind as methods of lowering the will to lie, not breaking limbs or injuring someone.  It's 2 different things.

And you don't mind the insurgents doing that to American troops? Or the police doing it to you?

[WMCoolmon]

Stupid question, kara.

The point of war is to kill the other guy, or otherwise 'neutralize' them. The overall goal may be to gain land or to save a bunch of people. But when one group is fighting another group in some sort of armed conflict, even if it isn't an official war, they are going to do things that would be otherwise considered, well, worse in a peacetime situation.

Obviously, anyone is going to mind being tortured or killed. Does that mean that the UN should forbid the use of lethal weapons? No. Even if all the nations agreed to it, sooner or later someone would kill somone else, and we'd be right back where we started.

The question of using any method to extract information from prisoners is a blend of civility and pragmatism. You must draw the line and then stick by it. Otherwise, the line is meaningless.

So why draw the line? It gives you a moral advantage. People will be more likely to support your side if they know that you do draw a line, and stick by it, because there's something to stick by. Other than that, it's a question of morals and human psychology. Some people believe it's wrong; some people simply cannot do it, for whatever reason.

But of course the age-old question is, how do you defeat the enemy without becoming them? They are not always going to be willing to say, "Hey - you didn't treat our guys so bad, so we're not gonna treat your guys so bad." It works if you think there might be a possibility of a truce in the end, and it's politically expedient. But if you're in a full-scale war, you or your enemy might think - "Well, depriving them of sleep hasn't worked. The information they know could save lives. What's a little pain when lives hang in the balance?" And thus begins the slippery slope.

I doubt that in any successful military, a chief doctrine has been to tell the soldiers that they don't need to worry about this, because someone somewhere wrote on a piece of paper that they weren't going to do it...although that person may be dead or no longer in governmental service, and probably isn't going to be making the decision about what the opposing force is or isn't going to use.

That's why joining the military is such a big deal. It's putting your entire self on the line for a greater whole than oneself, voluntarily.

Edit: In order to really be able to ask a put-yourself-in-their-shoes question, you have to ask, would it be justified? If the police had good reason to believe that you had information that could save lives, how far would they be justified to go to get you to reveal that information? I think everybody agrees that torture for the sake of torture is wrong, but to assume that it's the only reason that torture happens is simply naive.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Liberator


And then people die, just to protect you delicate little sensibilities.

Let's understand something, I'm advocating the denial of sleep and peace of mind as methods of lowering the will to lie, not breaking limbs or injuring someone.  It's 2 different things.

Actually, as you assumptatively put it, 'people die' as a potential consequence of observing the standards of justice and freedom which this invasion was supposedly to bring to Iraq.  You could probably reduce the murder rate in the US by placing survellance cameras in every house - would you support that?  Because otherwise, people die.

(of course, people are dying in custody as well, so I'm not sure how you weight the value of the life of one innocent-until-proven guilty detainee against people who might potentially be killed if that detainee was in fact guilty)

And, again you're assuming these people are guilty without any evidence or indeed any way to quantify that claim.

Finally, psychological torture is still torture (and defined as such in the conventions the US is a signatory of).  And torture is of no use as an intelligence gathering method; the more effective it is, the more effective it is at encouraging the suspect to lie and say what the torturer/interrogator wants, rather than the actual truth.  

Continous sleep denial, for example, may 'lower the will' of the victim, but it also leaves them open to psychological (for example, psychosis) and brain damage as well as leading to incorrect responses owing to hallucination. A study at the University of California at San Diego on sleep deprivation revealed that different parts of the brain are active in a sleep deprived individual (the temporal lobe in particular shuts down); the more sleep deprived a person is, the less coherent they communicate and the more 'pliable' they are to lie (one interrogator got these people to sign anything he put in front of them; not for the promise of freedom etc, but for the promise of uninterrupted sleep).

[Liberator]

I'm not talking a permanent or long term denial of sleep here, aldo, a week at the most.  You know how bad you feel after a single day without sleep?  Now imagine someone asking you questions, you probably be more inclined to tell them what they want to know.

[vyper]

[q]you probably be more inclined to tell them what they want to know.[/q]

Or what they want to hear?

[Liberator]

Not if you didn't know that you wouldn't be denied sleep after the session.

So you'd be okay with it if you and others knew...knew...that someone was going to kill someone else and the police didn't use psychologically harsh interogation methods to extract that that information?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Stupid question, kara.

You missed my point. I was complaining about the way Lib would be the first to complain about how US marines were treated if this were to happen to them.

You can't denounce the enemy as monsters for doing exactly the same thing you're doing. In fact Saddam actually treated his american POWs better than the people in Guantanamo Bay are being treated.

Either you say this is war and both sides can do whatever they please or you sign up to a treaty to make user that your men are treated humanely in return for the enemy doing the same thing.

[vyper]

Originally posted by Liberator
Not if you didn't know that you wouldn't be denied sleep after the session.

So you'd be okay with it if you and others knew...knew...that someone was going to kill someone else and the police didn't use psychologically harsh interogation methods to extract that that information?

I can't address that because your definition or harsh and my definition are two different things. Additionally, how can you "know" they're going to do anything until either a) they confess properly or b) they actually do it?

[Bobboau]

ok, lets look at three completely diferent situations that start initaly the same.

there is a guy, the police know he is connected with a disapearence of someone, but they can prove it.

a)they beat a confession out of him.

this isituation the confession is useless and should be throughen out.

b)they beat not only a confession out of him, but he also discloses the location of the body and the murder weapon and tests prove his fingerprints and the victim's blood are on the knife.

this situation produces physical evedence that they would not have otherwise gotten, the confession is not relevent, but the fact that he knew were the body and the murder weapon was, and that it had his prints and the victim's blood on it, prety much prove that he was in fact the killer.

c)they beat a confession out of him, as well the location of the victim they go out to a remote streach of woods and find the nearly dead victim locked in a basement of an old hunting cabbin. the victim then identifies the man as the person who abducted them.

in this case information wich saved a life was gained in addition to damning evedence. even if passive interogation would have provided the same information it likely would not have done so before the victim died.
and as usual the confession is worthless. information gained is not.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Liberator
I'm not talking a permanent or long term denial of sleep here, aldo, a week at the most.  You know how bad you feel after a single day without sleep?  Now imagine someone asking you questions, you probably be more inclined to tell them what they want to know.

A week is considered the beginning of long-term deprivation. Don't try and excuse the act of torture by claiming it's 'not that bad'; it's inhumane, hypocritical and immoral.  Don't you know what sleep deprivation consists of?  Ear-splitting white noise, 24 hour blinding lights, often combined with regular beatings, dousings in water, forced into stress positions (i.e. causing short or long term damage to muscles and extreme pain).

Not to mention that even short term sleep deprivation results in impairment of memory.  Even if it works, the information becomes increasingly unreliable the longer it's applied.

Originally posted by Liberator
Not if you didn't know that you wouldn't be denied sleep after the session.

Oh, of course - if you sign whatevers put in front of you.  So what you're saying is, torture someone for a week or so.  And then, if they still don't talk, they're free to go?

Surely you understand how torture is used to extract statements - prolonged extreme suffering, until the torturer gets exactly the result they want?

Originally posted by Liberator
So you'd be okay with it if you and others knew...knew...that someone was going to kill someone else and the police didn't use psychologically harsh interogation methods to extract that that information?

How would you possibly know unless you already had that information via evidence?

And no, I wouldn't.  Because what you're suggesting is a scenario where you use effectively the same technique the criminal is using.  What you describe as psycholigically 'harsh', I presume still refers to the dangerous and unreliable methods used to torture out 'information'.

Originally posted by Bobboau
ok, lets look at three completely diferent situations that start initaly the same.

there is a guy, the police know he is connected with a disapearence of someone, but they can prove it.

a)they beat a confession out of him.

this isituation the confession is useless and should be throughen out.

b)they beat not only a confession out of him, but he also discloses the location of the body and the murder weapon and tests prove his fingerprints and the victim's blood are on the knife.

this situation produces physical evedence that they would not have otherwise gotten, the confession is not relevent, but the fact that he knew were the body and the murder weapon was, and that it had his prints and the victim's blood on it, prety much prove that he was in fact the killer.

c)they beat a confession out of him, as well the location of the victim they go out to a remote streach of woods and find the nearly dead victim locked in a basement of an old hunting cabbin. the victim then identifies the man as the person who abducted them.

in this case information wich saved a life was gained in addition to damning evedence. even if passive interogation would have provided the same information it likely would not have done so before the victim died.
and as usual the confession is worthless. information gained is not.

Bob; if there's enough evidence for the police to know the connection, then there's no need for torture in the first place.  The justice system operates on a fundamental principle of innocent until proven guilty; even if the methods you describe were legal and not prohibited under any manner of local and international convention, they would still be being used against an innocent - unconvicted - suspect.

not only that - what if they person picked up in suspicion is innocent, and beaten until they confess to whatever the police want them to say?  Because that's a lot easier - and more likely to happen - in a system permitting torture than getting the correct suspect and torturing them.

[q]"Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress… KUBARK (a codeword for the CIA) is especially vulnerable to such tactics because the interrogation is conducted for the sake of information." – CIA Vietnam-era interrogation manual[/q]

For me it's simple; torture is most effective as a form of terrorism, not intelligence gathering.  This 'war on terror' is suppossed to be being fought (on face value) against despotic tyrants and terrorists.  Both of these moral enemies are vilified for using torture in their interests.  What right can we (the west / civillisation / the forces in Iraq - any definition you apply) possibly have for using it in our own, and saying we're better than them?  Because our 'cause' is just? - isn't that what they'd say.