Torture doesn't work. Film at 11.

Back to torture. If someone had my kids, and I had tried other methods, and I didn't use every single means possible to find them, and they ended up dead, I'd end up haunted forever wondering if I had bit the bullet and tortured someone who probably knew where they were if the kids would still be alive. All the philosophy, morality, legality, all of that poop would be out the window.

I know you guys say that such scenarios are contrived, and you're right to a degree -- all scenarios are contrived to a certain degree. But having never been in such a situation we can't really sit around and Monday Morning Quarterback the deal -- it can of course be argued that torture is very unlikely to find the victims, but at that time the father wouldn't know that.

Some people would say that they would never torture a criminal in such a situation, and the death of the kidnap victim is worth the price of maintaining ones morals, and to those people I say, I respect your conviction but beg to differ -- the lives of the victime far outweigh any satisfaction I would feel for not compromising my ethics for a worthy cause. I'd rather my kids be alive and me in jail than dead and me feeling all self-righteous.

 

The problem is that in all these contrived situations, the impending attack is a known quantity and the likelihood that the potential torture target knows something is extremely high. In all the real world examples we've been discussing, though, there has been no impending attack -- and we've had no real reason to believe the captive would know anything of use about any such specific attack if there were.

 

But the differences between a father and a nation are not comparable. The father would do anything (i would hope!) to save his children, but a nation has millions of "children" and does not have the capacity to feel that way about a single "child".

 

Fair enough -- my point is that in heightened emotional circumstances, individuals will do things that we cringe at, but we can't really blame them for doing whatever was in their power to save innocent lives.

I fully understand that it doesn't apply to nations. I'm just saying that if a father tortured a junkie who had bragged "my friends are raping your 6 year old as we speak" in order to find out where said daughter was, I would throw out all the crap about "ethics" and give the father a bloody medal. I wouldn't sit there 2 weeks later and say "oh, the junkie was just high, and anyway, it's better for the world for the father to pat himself on the back and stay all civilized even if the little girl suffered for 30 hours." So until we face a truly horrendous situation, we should not ruch to judgement on otherwise decent individuals whose actions don't square with our armchair philosophising.

 

Wrong. We can and should hold them liable for those actions. Individuals will do things that are against the law, but believe it's the right thing to do. Those individuals must be willing to take whatever punishment is necessary. The father saving his daughter is great, but it's up to a judge and jury to decide whether or not the circumstances are mitigating.

 

Fair enough - -I would hope that the jury would have the brainpower to see the mitigating factors in such cases. I can tell you for a fact that if I were on that jury I'd hang it in a heartbeat. Of course, the junkie's defense lawyer would strike me from the list in a heartbeat.

 

A sweet moment of vindication ... no, two!

Hey folks, this is one of the sweet moments of vindication for me. When I said that, way, way, like years, back, at a time of suspended reasoning and inflamed passion, I was accused of hating America* ... sweet memories. I am referring to me stating that US detention and interrogation policies violated the Geneva Conventions (by inventing the the phony 'enemy combatant')(and violated the Convention against Torture), and quite transparently so.

Well, I got company. Turns out that the well known blame-America-firster General Petraeus shares my view on that matter.

I won't explain why I was and still am outraged about US violations of the Geneva Conventions. Those who don't understand why won't understand me explaining it (again) anyway.

As for the assertion that tough tactics are needed to crack those hardened terrorists .... well, my vindication is sweetened by the report that Ali Soufan, the former FBI interrogator, revealed that Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard opened up about the 9/11 terror attacks only after being offered -- sugar free cookies.

 

LKD -- you are advocating vigilante tactics and saying 'it's okay.' I don't believe it is. If we allow such things we may as well go back to lynching, stoning, and the ever famous tar and feathering.

Ragusa: I'm not sure how much vindication you are taking here. He only claimed we violated the articles on torture, which was not an issue in the arguments I remember (I also believed the torture issues were a violation of the Geneva Convention). He did not admit the detention at GITMO to be a violation, nor did he make any comment with regards to reclassifying the terrorists.

 

T2,
indeed, Petraeus speaks of torture. A statement on torture of prisoners in conflict also makes a statement on the detention policy that makes them prisoners. You can derive that this is not only about torture but about US detention policies from the context of the Geneva conventions III and IV themselves, as they regulate the status of POW and civilian personnel.

From Geneva III (on POW)

From Geneva IV (on civilians)

You will notice when you look for it that the 'enemy combatant' is conspicuously absent from the Geneva conventions. That is because it is a fictitious category specifically invented to circumvent Geneva provisions, and basically unheard of internationally before iirc about early 2002. The Geneva conventions are all encompassing. For our purposes here it means that either you're a civilian under Geneva IV, or you are a POW under Geneva III.

One way or another, the US had no right to treat either category the way the 'coercive interrogation techniques' saw them treated. Let's for the sake of argument assume that Petraeus meant torture when he said it. If any POW or civilian has been tortured, that means that, depending on the status of the subject of torture, either Geneva III or IV have been violated.

When US torture violated the Geneva conventions, then those who were tortured must have been under the protection of the Geneva conventions. That is the implicit admission in Petraeus statement. When Petraeus says that the US tortured in violation of Geneva it is worthwhile to think about whom they tortured in violation of Geneva. Civilians? POW? Or 'detainees' and 'enemy combatants'?

The torture program that Bush initiated was about 'detainees' or 'enemy combatants', and the torture debate is about that, and that is what Petraeus is talking about. There are no 'enemy combatants', nor are there 'detainees' under Geneva III or IV. Anyone in US detention in the context of the GWOT has either the POW status or civilian status. In labelling them 'detainees' or 'enemy combatants' the Bush administration denied those people their status and the rights that the status involved under Geneva III or IV. The violations like mistreatment or torture on people, even if they are put in a fictitious category, are always also violations of those people's status. One offence carries within itself the other.

When Petraeus says that the US conducted torture in violation of Geneva, he also implicitly admits that the US violated the Convention Against Torture, as the two conventions both prohibit torture and use matching definitions of torture. To close the circle and go beyond international law, the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions are international treaties signed by the US and ratified by congress and thus US law of the land. When Bush administration policies violated Geneva, as Petraeus says, they violated US law as well. Quite a can of worms, isn't it?

 

I disagree with this statement:

As far as which Article the terrorists fall under: Once a force occupies a territory, civilians who engage an occupying force fall entirely under the laws of the occupying force. The Geneva Convention has no jurisdiction. Civilians are required (in order to have protection under the Geneva Convention) to not take up arms against an occupying force. That is why spies have no protection under the Geneva Convention and neither do revolutionary cells (or insurgent terrorists). Under martial law, detention is often allowed for extended period. I'm not saying it makes such detention right, just not illegal.

While I believe the terrorists operating in Iraq fall outside the Geneva Convention because they have taken up arms against an occupying force, they should have instead fallen under the laws of the occupying force (either the US or the Iraqi government). The Bush administration did not agree.

The torture is still a violation of the Geneva Convention, though.

 

No T2,
you mix up a few things.

First, the Geneva conventions determine status. Yes, people taken prisoner fall under occupation jurisdiction, but that in itself doesn't say anything about their status. Prisoners in war do have rights according to their status. Deny them their status and you violate Geneva III or IV.

Second, terrorists and people who take up arms against an occupying force without complying with the requirements of Geneva III are civilians. The POW status is a privilege for those who fight against an occupying force in an honourable manner according to the laws of war. Those who don't, like terrorists, forfeit those privileges. However, these people are not outside Geneva. They are then considered civilians under Geneva IV. Those who commit acts of violence against occupation troops are to be treated as ordinary criminals. That is, if you want to fight, the civilian status is not a privilege but a severe disadvantage. That was the idea behind differentiating between legitimate combatants and illegitimate combatants in Geneva III. The US applied that differentiation consequently during the Vietnam war. VC were routinely tried in South Vietnamese courts for crimes. NVA troops were POW.

Being treated as an ordinary criminal is the sanction for dishonourable combatants under Geneva III and IV. If you think that's not severe enough think again.

Consider an Iraqi fighting openly with a distinctive armband or headscarf or when part of a militia (think of the Sadrists at Najaf), who lays an ambush and blows up a Humvee with an RPG and kills US troops. He is to be treated as a POW under Geneva III. An Al Qaeda member in street clothes, placing a car bomb that kills a US soldier, is a civilian under Geneva IV, and he commits a criminal act that is punishable under Iraqi law, which means he will be likely sentenced to death.

But even this disadvantaged status of dishonourable fighters didn't give the Bush administration the free hand they wanted, and so they invented the 'enemy combatant' and brazenly claimed that to those under that label Geneva didn't apply. The concept of the 'enemy combatant' and the intentionally confusing wording has to be rightly understood as a rhetorical ploy that is on first sight plausible enough to find acceptance among the legally ignorant (no offence) and make them accept illegal measures, based on the gut feeling that those ... swine (?) don't deserve protections. Well, too bad, but that view is incorrect.

 

I'm glad you brought that up, and you are entirely correct. Many people are under the mistaken belief that by classifying all of the people taken prisoner as civilians as opposed to soldiers, we are going to let them off easy. In reality the exact opposite is true. If the majority of these people were just soldiers we'd have a bigger problem on our hands. It is against the rules of the Geneva Convention to summarily execute captured soldiers, and you also cannot send a captured soldier to trial on attempted (or actual) murder charges. With a civilian you can put them to trial, they'll almost assuredly be found guilty by a jury consisting of members of the nation they attacked, and they can be sentenced to either life in prison or execution.

Captured members of Al Quida are civilians under the terms of the Geneva Convention. As such they do not get any of the protections that people fighitng under the banner of a soverign nation are afforded when taken prisoner.

 

Which, to get back to Geneva IV means that they still cannot be tortured. To make a counterpoint to the Bush administration's position, that is so because Geneva IV does apply.

Which the Bush administration's torture lawyers of course knew perfectly well. They did not interpret Geneva in good faith. They were (obviously) tasked to justify torture, and they couldn't do it credibly under either Geneva III or IV, as both contain explicit and clear prohibitions of torture. That's why they needed a fictitious category 'enemy combatant' that they claimed to be outside of Geneva.

 

From the Blog Balkinisation:

The reasoning from side of the Justice Department is strikingly relevant here.

 

​

You remember that guy? John Kiriakou, retired CIA employee, managed through his testimony to ABC News, to turn around the torture debate in America in 2007 in favour of the Bush administration by saying that torture worked, splendidly, indulging his interviewers and their audience with details.

He has now written his inevitable memoirs, and on the something like the second last page he admits that he actually made his account up and based it on hearsay, also suggesting it was part of a domestic CIA disinformation operation.

Oopsie.

On second thought: Isn't domestic disinformation by US intelligence services illegal? How eminently fortunate that Kiriakou at the time he made these statements no longer was employed at the CIA What a lucky turn of events

 

Y'know, I'm not sure I trust anything this guy says. Are we really sure he even worked for the CIA?

 

Yes, he did work for the CIA. He was Steven Seagal's partner.

 

OK, a post in whatnots (random babbling) made me think of this, I am sure it has been discussed here before, but I want to revisit the subject. I have to say, the post really struck a chord with me -- made me nauseous, in fact. The post was about the North Vietnamese torturing a POW, and we know for a fact that they engaged in horrific tortures against the American soldiers they captured. That's the torture connection and why I'm putting it in this thread.

My question is, having learned this, how the hell does Jane Fonda, AKA Hanoi Jane, look at her self-righteous, smug, stupid, gullible face in the mirror? Seriously. This isn't a question of left or right, it's a question of when your fellow citizens are being brutally tortured, how can you go around saying "it's not happening, it's a lie?"

A dark, dark part of me dreams of Fonda being subjected to all of the torments visited on those poor, conscripted boys, all the while having someone saying to her "hey, Jane, don't worry! This isn't really happening! And even if it is, it's not a big deal!"

I know, I know, it wouldn't really solve anything, and it would be immoral to boot. Just like denying the suffering of your fellow citizens is immoral.

 

It takes a special sort of idiot to visit the country with which your country is at war with and take a seat on a AA gun used to shoot down your countrymen, who when captured were often heavily abused. Through her very public denial she IMO added insult to injury for those of her countrymen who had suffered mistreatment at the hands of the North Vietnamese. The implication of her at the AA gun suggests her attitude was one of 'they have it coming', 'baby killers' that they were, no?

. ​

Conservatives in the US still loathe her for that. It is very easy to understand how soldiers who served in Vietnam cannot forgive her that. I know I would hold a grudge if I were in their shoes and a German actor did something comparable.

The problem is for me that Jane did not condemn the practice torture as wrong, a thing she should have been able to understand. She was blinded by her moral outrage to see only what she wanted to see. She had a bi-polar world view, in which America was evil and where she was on the side of the angels. Ironically that is a flaw she shares with the many contemporary Republicans who make political hay of their supposedly tough pro torture stance - John McCain being a notable exception - after all, these detainees have it coming, terrorists that they are.

Apparently, for those among today's Republicans who are pro-torture, 'Hanoi Jane' is no scoundrel for what she did - rather the primary problem with her appears to be that she was simply on the wrong side. They're two of a kind, one blind on the left eye, the other on the right eye. The verdict is worse for the cynics who merely see the utility of a pro-torture stance, or in the denial of torture.