No shame to learn from an expert? What about torture?

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There was a second question that you missed....

I don't agree with the torture at Gitmo. Period. The only time torture is even marginally useful is when it is used in extremis and to find an immediate objective (and it is of questionable worth even then).

I did not explain myself very well -- it was smart of the commanders at Gitmo to bring in someone from SERE. Death of prisoners at the hands of their guards is not looked upon favorably anywhere. Properly trained personnel do not make the kind of mistakes that would discredit or embarrass the chain of command. It's all political. By ensuring their personnel are well trained by experts, the command protects itself and the personnel serving there.

I may not agree with what they do, but I can see why they are doing it. I think the reasoning is not sound, but often tragic loss clouds the judgement of people -- even millions of people at a time. People in the military are not exempt from such a lapse in judgement.

 

So we disagree on much less than I thought. I can also see why they are doing it. I don't condemn the soldiers or government personnel in general who have to implement such policies. They're probably holding their noses and do their job.

I can at the same time condemn the bastards who ordered it, even though I can see why they ordered this program. But comprehending and endorsing are two pairs of shoes. It is still a blunder and not just a crime they had to pardon themselves for.

My personal view is that torture should always be prohibited and punished. It must be clear that it is prohibited. To establish it as a SOP, as Bush ordered it, must not be.

Yes, it is all political, the entire 'torture debate'. It was revolting to see all those GOP candidates with the exception of Ron Paul falling over each other in the hurry to assert how much they like torture to their partisan audience.

The cynical part is that while folks like Lynndie England go to jail for basically causing bad press in visibly manifesting the effects of proliferation of such techniques, Bush and his goons, the ones responsible, will not be held accountable. The belief is that going after such people will only tarnish America's honour. I don't buy that.

 

We disagree on Lynndie England -- she went to jail because she violated basic regulations. No one could tie those violations to any orders given by officers above those few NCO's convicted.

Also, McCain has repeatedly condemned torture and has worked to abolish it.

 

Oh, I am fully aware Lynndie also committed a crime. Much like that creep Grahner. And indeed, military discipline requires them to be punished for their sadistic actions. The disturbing question is whether she would have been punished by her superiors without all the dirt she kicked up. Did they really didn't notice what was going on? I'm not so sure.

Mc Cain's stance is a little ambiguous if you ask me, but you are right about his initiative, to some extent. McCain later caved in to the Bush administration in limiting his torture 'ban' to the military only, allowing exceptions for the CIA:

In his caving in he is certainly not alone, but it is not as much a principled stance as it looks on the surface.

 

This comes down to a fundamental question: what is torture, exactly? I'll weigh in with my two cents:

Torture includes:

1: Physically beating or wounding a prisoner who is not physically resisting or threatening you.

2: Physically beating or wounding someone else and forcing another prisoner to watch, telling them "we'll stop beating your friend if you tell us what we want to know."

3: Complete and total sensory deprivation.

4: Starvation / dehydration.

5: Deliberately keeping a prisoner in temperatures over 90 degrees Fahrenheit or below 35 degrees Fehrenheit without proper clothing.

6: Waterboarding or similar techniques that cause extreme stress to the physical body even though they doesn't leave a mark.

Those things to me are torture. What is not torture in my book?

1: Depriving someone of religious symbols or insulting those symbols. This may be a human rights violation but it is not torture.

2: Bland diets. As long as they get the nutrients they need, the food you serve a prisoner need not be form the Ritz -- or even Mcdonalds.

3: Isolation / partial sensory deprivation: Being alone for 24 hours a day for a week on end would be difficult, but it's not torture. Having a room that is just 4 grey walls is not torture, though it sure isn't pleasant.

4: Extended incarceration -- holding someone for a long time may be hard on them, and if you're doing it illegally like those FARC bastards then it's wrong, but it's not torture -- walk down that road and a life sentence is torture, and I don't buy that. Perhaps the inclusion or exclusion of a trial makes a difference here, but I have a hard time viewing detention as torture.

That's my list. Anyone wanna make some changes?

 

@LKD - on your last point on incarceration - are you referring to the recent Supreme Court decision? Because if you are, your second point was critical - the inclusion of a trial. The SC didn't say it was illegal to hold them as suspects - they said it was illegal to hold them for an indefinite period of time, without charging them with any crime, and without giving them a trial. It's not like the SC decision means everyone at Gitmo can go free.

 

Actually, Aldeth, I was referring to the bleeding hearts who believe that even a life term sentence is a "cruel and unusual punishment". They are few, but they are out there. Just what society is to do to protect themselves from violent, unrepentant criminals is beyond me, but some of these zealots (yes, Drew, I know they are rare) seem to think that ANY punishment for a crime is torture, and that we should just ask the serial murderers and rapists nicely to please not do that again.

But I digress from the Gitmo issue. I would argue that holding the prisoners without trial could be construed as a violation of their human rights, but the mere act of holding them is not torture. Certainly the way they are treated while being held could be considered torture, but not just holding them. If, however, the prisoners are combatants and thus POWs, then as I understand it they are not required to have trials -- when there is a cessation of hostilities they can be sent back to their country or army of origin. Such a cessation of hostilities seems unlikely for the foreseeable future, so the detainees are screwed there.

I am not sure what the US would have to prove or demonstrate to show that these people were actively involved in hostilities against American troops, though. Terrorists have, it seems to me, had their cake and ate it too for a long time -- when they wanted to be, they were civilians and received all the rights and protections under international law that are afforded to civilians, and then they carried out acts of aggression and violence in secret, and when it suited them they wanted to be treated as soldiers, in effect getting the best of both worlds. The American unilateral creation of a third class of detainee is repulsive, but it is an act borne of frustration and the idea of turnabout being fair play -- WE will now have the best of both worlds, with those we don't trust being given the worst of both worlds (not to strain an idiom too far, but you get the point.)

I think it would get a Presidential order to get those detainees released from Gitmo, and the only one who MIGHT do that is Obama.

 

Thanks for the clarification LKD. I agree that imprisonment - even for life - is not cruel and unusual punishment. Quite to the contrary, I think 99% of people will agree that for the most heinous of crimes, the only way to protect society is to keep these people locked up.

As for the status of these "enemy combatants", they are almost certainly civilians. The only way they could be considered POWs would be if they were something like Baathist loyalists fighting to maintain power in Iraq, or Taliban loyalists trying to maintain power in Afghanistan. Terrorists - almost by definition - are not official members of a nation's standing army. As such, they are civilians, and can be tried and executed. (As I said before, this is one of the few cases where you would prefer to be classified as a soldier, as POWs are NOT to be summarily executed for participating in combat operations.)

 

I agree that terrorists are civilians, but then in my opinion that means that they must be tried before a penalty is assessed upon them. The detainees at Gitmo must therefore be tried. IIRC, they have not. That is what I consider to be problematic -- if the US has evidence that the detainees are terrorists, they should produce that evidence openly instead of "Star Chambering" the whole deal.

In a case that I mentioned earlier, several soldiers saw the boy under discussion shoot and kill an American soldier. Their witness is enough to convict the little bugger, and once that's done they can kill him, give him a life sentence, send him to a mental hospital, or even go the torture route and force him to watch re-runs of "The Brady Bunch" endlessly for the next 50 years. But there must be a trial -- soon.

 

Yes!

The Bushies never wanted the Gitmo detainees to have trials. They also didn't want to respect the categories and limitations Geneva conventions in interrogations and invented the 'enemy combatant'. So they tortured and coerced around 'Sino-American Style'. That alone was clearly against international law, and probably, if the retroactive immunity is any indication, against US law as well.

Now that they have been forced to have trials, through Supreme Court decisions pointing out the illegality of their past conduct, they are facing the problem that they, for the procedures to be fair, must not allow testimony, be it self-incriminating or from a third party, extracted under torture. It is predictable that this will make a mockery of many of the cases they have. The current use of secret evidence is IMO mainly aimed on covering up the extent of the use of torture. I dare say the Bushies, with their ideological blinkers on presidential powers, never predicted that.

Absolutely

 

Torture has proven over and over throughout history that it quite often gives false facts and as such it should be illegal and never used without exception.