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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 3:57:58 PM   
rulemylife


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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic 


          Isn't it, Hunter?  I am of the opinion that there are certain lines out there that can be crossed, actions that negate the obligations of basic decency and human rights others have towards the perpetrator.  Implied consent.


And when we start crossing those lines where does that stop?

What then seperates our actions from the actions of the perpretrator?

quote:



        This German didn't land in an interrogation room out of a vacuum, nor did the inhabitants of Gitmo.  Their deeds amount to a signed waiver as far as I'm concerned.


A waiver?

As I recall, there were numerous documented cases of "the inhabitants of Gitmo" basically being sold into detention by those who falsely accused them to obtain the bounty our government was handing out with almost no questions asked.

Want to make a good bit of money?  Just tell the U.S. your neighbor is a terrorist.

quote:


Of course torture is a bad thing, but out at the far edge, there is a gray area where I say "bring out the vise-grips, and propane torch," if that is what it takes to save innocent lives.


Then what happens when your own brother, son, or daughter becomes an enemy prisoner? 

There is no "gray area".

When you give credence to those tactics then you are essentially condoning their use by governments and organizations that will use them far more brutally against our own.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:09:09 PM   
TheHeretic


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quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

Then what happens when your own brother, son, or daughter becomes an enemy prisoner? 




           What a delightful sentiment, RML.  Same to you, of course.

         What happens to prisoners on that side is torture for the hell of it, and brutal murder.  Do google up Nick Berg's last moments.

       Ya'll have fun.  

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:17:56 PM   
Raechard


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Status: offline 		I'm not sure what the execution of Nick Berg has to do with a torture discussion, they have no laws we know this? The real question is who are they and when do you know you have one of them? Before or after the trial? This decides if we have laws or not.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:20:05 PM   
Sanity


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Or read the recent news accounts concerning the way captured Jewish civilians were so horridly mistreated (read "tortured") prior to their being executed during the last round of terrorist attacks in India.

And for what... no reason at all. Just, simply because they were Jewish.

The grey area we have in this war is on account of the enemy we are fighting - on account of how urgent it really is that we stop them.


quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

        What happens to prisoners on that side is torture for the hell of it, and brutal murder.  Do google up Nick Berg's last moments.

      Ya'll have fun.  


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:29:57 PM   
calamitysandra


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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

quote:

ORIGINAL: calamitysandra
Who will be responsible to define those "lines"?


We don't define them, Sandra.  They are shifting, and deep into the the gray.  It is pointless to even talk about what goes on in the murk, when others simply bleat about "blaaa-aak" and "whi-iiite."  I even saw one of our number throwing out a "pro-torture" label.  (I don't think Herself would let a direct reply to that fly). 

         What the fuck do brutal dictators have to do with a values crisis of individual human rights vs. the life or lives of innocents?  (And why doesn't old Joseph Stalin get the mention he should, instead of Hitler or Hussein?  He's far the record-holder of the three.)



Yes, that is the point. Those lines are shifting, even different from person to person. Using your explanation, torture should be allowed, if the person doing the torturing, or the government condoning the torturing, feels that it is necessary and justified. And that would set us up for an unbelievable mess.

Now, why I used Hussein and not Stalin? tendency to short term memory only in many people, easier to use an example that is near and dear at the moment.
Plus, one rationale for invading the Irak that crops up time and again, is that it was necessary to remove the vile torturer. And while that is a whole bunch of different threads, I wanted to show that he could have used (and most likely has used) your rationale as well.


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:32:03 PM   
Raechard


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Status: offline 		It's not urgent you catch a bus when there is one running every five minutes. We can use the excuse of urgency for all kinds of misdeeds, rarely has the fate of the world been held in one persons mind.
 
Once again, we are lowering our standards why?

Also how many times have people being tortured in one place been able to tell you things unrelated to them in another? One hand doesn't know what the other is doing, and the masterminds we have held so long they are no longer in the loop and therefore don’t know what is going on anyway.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:36:11 PM   
rulemylife


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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife

Then what happens when your own brother, son, or daughter becomes an enemy prisoner? 




          What a delightful sentiment, RML.  Same to you, of course.

        What happens to prisoners on that side is torture for the hell of it, and brutal murder.  Do google up Nick Berg's last moments.

      Ya'll have fun.  


Not being sentimental, it was not a sentiment.

It is the reality that one of the basic reasons most countries do not participate in torture, or acknowledge it if they do, is the effect it may have on their own citizens held by a foreign country.

Nick Berg was killed by terrorists, not by a foreign government.  If we use the same techniques to combat terrorism then how can we even call it terrorism?  Are we not justifying the same things we claim to be fighting against?

Do you think that if we abandon our principles and become equally brutal the terrorists will quiver in fright and leave us alone because we will have proven how badass we truly are?

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:39:39 PM   
calamitysandra


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quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
However, probably the paragraph that strikes the deepest cord with me is the following:

quote:

ORIGINAL: kittinSol
But I think any potential resort to torture in rare, ticking-bomb cases would be better handled within the context of an outright ban. The grand moral tradition of civil disobedience, for example, specifies that there are instances in which obedience to laws must be overridden by loyalty to a higher moral obligation. These are usually unjust laws, but not always. Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in an assassination plot against Hitler, for instance, but he did not argue for rewriting moral prohibitions against political assassinations. He was prepared to let God and history be his judge. If a one-in-a-million instance were to emerge, in which a responsible official believed that a ban on torture must be overridden as a matter of emergency response, let him do so knowing that he would have to answer for his action before God, law, and neighbor. This is a long way from an official authorization for torture.


This is a solution to difficult moral decisions that I have advocated myself, in these forums, for other situations. And, in effect, it is the solution that the German police accepted.

But would you accept such a solution for other situations such as euthanasia and abortion? Why or why not?


Basically, this solution is inherent in every human decision to act in a way that goes against the law.
You do something you feel you need to do, even if you know there will, and probably even accept there should, be repercussions.

The only difference is the way that society at large feels about the deed and according to that, what the outfall will be.

A murderer who decided to kill for some bucks, will be treated differently than somebody who tortured to safe lives. But the initial decision they made, to obey the law or to act regardless, is, on the most primitive level, the same.


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:40:47 PM   
calamitysandra


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity

 
Or read the recent news accounts concerning the way captured Jewish civilians were so horridly mistreated (read "tortured") prior to their being executed during the last round of terrorist attacks in India.

And for what... no reason at all. Just, simply because they were Jewish.

The grey area we have in this war is on account of the enemy we are fighting - on account of how urgent it really is that we stop them.


quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

        What happens to prisoners on that side is torture for the hell of it, and brutal murder.  Do google up Nick Berg's last moments.

      Ya'll have fun.  



They do it too, so we are allowed as well?


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Profile   Post #: 89
RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:49:11 PM   
Sanity


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Status: offline 		Nobody on our side lowered any standards - I think that's where you're making your mistake.

In both cases, with the terrorists and the kidnapper lives were deemed to be on the line, and the choices were harsh interrogation or allow innocents to needlessly perish.

It was a difficult  choice between two evils, and not a lowering of any standards at all. Even the judges of the European Court of Human Rights couldn't find it in their hearts to punish anyone who made what they deemed to be the right choice in the face of those perilous circumstances, could they.



quote:

ORIGINAL: Raechard

It's not urgent you catch a bus when there is one running every five minutes. We can use the excuse of urgency for all kinds of misdeeds, rarely has the fate of the world been held in one persons mind.
 
Once again, we are lowering our standards why?

Also how many times have people being tortured in one place been able to tell you things unrelated to them in another? One hand doesn't know what the other is doing, and the masterminds we have held so long they are no longer in the loop and therefore don’t know what is going on anyway.


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Profile   Post #: 90
RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 4:53:21 PM   
Sanity


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They do it, take your pick, to get their jollies or because they're evil, or because they're animals. Whatever you want to call it. And what they do is really torture.

What our men did, they did it to stop those monsters... and what our men did arguably wasn't torture at all.


quote:

ORIGINAL: calamitysandra


quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity


Or read the recent news accounts concerning the way captured Jewish civilians were so horridly mistreated (read "tortured") prior to their being executed during the last round of terrorist attacks in India.

And for what... no reason at all. Just, simply because they were Jewish.

The grey area we have in this war is on account of the enemy we are fighting - on account of how urgent it really is that we stop them.


quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

       What happens to prisoners on that side is torture for the hell of it, and brutal murder.  Do google up Nick Berg's last moments.

     Ya'll have fun.  



They do it too, so we are allowed as well?



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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 5:10:59 PM   
Raechard


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity
Nobody on our side lowered any standards - I think that's where you're making your mistake.

We are as free from Government interference as we were ten years ago? It's a shame when people don't realise what we once had and what we've lost. I'd also point out that holding up an example of how terrorists treat people to justify how we treat people is a significant lowering of standards.
quote:


In both cases, with the terrorists and the kidnapper lives were deemed to be on the line, and the choices were harsh interrogation or allow innocents to needlessly perish.

I would have allowed innocents to needlessly perish because the ends don't justify the means. You can't balance one life against a thousand and everyone is innocent until after a trial.
quote:


It was a difficult  choice between two evils,

You are still choosing evil. Not sure how torturing someone is the lesser of two evils or how someone even measures evil magnitude in that way?
quote:


Even the judges of the European Court of Human Rights couldn't find it in their hearts to punish anyone who made what they deemed to be the right choice in the face of those perilous circumstances, could they.

Politicians create law, judges interpret those laws and humanity questions them. Not questioning a law or a legal judgment of that law is like saying all laws should remain unchanged and we shouldn't learn from example. If you are interpreting what laws mean you are wasting your time because that is what judges are for. You should be questioning the judgments according to your own set of values, that is all you can do and the only part you currently play in the process.


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Profile   Post #: 92
RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 5:21:03 PM   
SimplyMichael


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Status: offline 		I would have no problem torturing a man's child in front of him in order to get information.  However, I would sort of expect that information achieved like that would be oh, I don't know, sort of important. 

The reason I am okay with that is the same reason that doing so is so often wrong.  The point is to win.  Torturing actual evil people, like Osama or Cheney (once out of office) in order to get the truth can allow you to win.  Torturing taxi drivers like that is how you lose.

When dealing with people who might have information who you are going to release if they don't, the way to win is to amaze them with how fair and respectful you are.  Because going in they might even be against you but if you show them that you are not the monsters they have been told, you just won a tiny battle, the sort that eventually wins insurgencies.  If instead, you torment the fucker, you just pissed of him, his family, his friends, and his tribe, and dude, you just fucking LOST the insurgency.

I am not against torture as a tactic, but just like a bayonet charge (something the Brits actually did in Iraq) it isn't a tactic that works all the time, just like if you are driving tacks, using a sledge hammer is unlikely to achieve good results.

To me, if someone has information SO valuable that I would be willing to torture them, then they are important enough I don't want them martyred.  They should just "disappear" one day and never be seen again.

The way the US handled/is handing torture is so wrong and counter productive as to be laughable.  It is enough to make one think they WANT to inflame the middle east, but no, they wouldn't want that, now would they?

< Message edited by SimplyMichael -- 12/13/2008 5:23:36 PM >

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/13/2008 6:08:33 PM   
OrionTheWolf


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Status: offline 		Educate yourself on what theoretical discussion is, why don't you.


quote:

ORIGINAL: Owner59

There`s nothing theoretical about electrodes attached to one`s balls or prolonged suffocation.

Or being forced to watch a loved one enduring them,either.


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/14/2008 11:01:10 AM   
philosophy


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Status: offline 		Fast gestalt reply



...black and white, digital world versus shades of grey analogue world......

We don't always, in a two value choice, get to choose between right and wrong. Sometimes our choices are between right and more right, sometimes between wrong and more wrong.
Without addressing the relative value of the information derived in Gitmo and the German case, the clear difference is that the perpetrator of what has been called violence in germany held his hands up to it immediately after. He was ready and apparently willing to take the consequences of what was done. Just because someone succesfully picks the least wrong alternative doesn't mean they have chosen a right course of action. Right and wrong are not relative, they are absolutes. The German example seems to understand this.....the arguments justifying Gitmo apparently do not.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/14/2008 11:35:10 AM   
ArticMaestro


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Status: offline 		Perception is an amazing thing.  Some folks can read that a suspect has his head banged into a wall and is beaten leaving bruises (and it was investigated and confirmed), and see "what has been called violence", instead of actuall violence.   The article also says that the victim of State violence, had to take the case to the ECHR, yet some see the perps as having "held thier hands up to it immediatly after".

I guess "absolute" has a double meaning on the other side of the Atlantic.  Things are not more or less absolute.  She is pregnant or is not pregnant.  Being close to term or carrying twins does not make a woman more pregnant than another.  There are no shades of "Less" or "More" in an absolute.  


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/14/2008 11:39:45 AM   
philosophy


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Status: offline 		....re-read post 60 this thread.

i used fuzzy language because the violence or lack of it wasn't the point i was trying to make.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/14/2008 12:10:48 PM   
ArticMaestro


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Status: offline 		Perception again.  In the German example the perpetrator of violence on a suspect, was admired by the consensus of the German public (at least according to post 60), not punished but instead promoted.  I am not seeing any sort of absolute stand against violence and psychological torture by the German public, State or the ECHR.  I am seeing that even though it is "wrong" it deserves to be rewarded with a promotion due to the circumstances.   Which does not make it an absolute by any definition I have ever seen of the word.

"Facing the music" (post 60) when that consists of public approval, hero status and a promotion???

Torture a suspect, get a reward....I suppose it is a gamble that police in the future will have to make. 

Just out of curiosity is the ECHR required to consider precedent rulings when making a decision?

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/14/2008 1:02:41 PM   
Sanity


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I've been wondering the same thing. How could they possibly ignore it and still call their product "justice"?


quote:

Just out of curiosity is the ECHR required to consider precedent rulings when making a decision?


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/14/2008 2:08:04 PM   
Politesub53


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quote:

ORIGINAL: ArticMaestro

"Facing the music" (post 60) when that consists of public approval, hero status and a promotion???

Torture a suspect, get a reward....I suppose it is a gamble that police in the future will have to make. 

Just out of curiosity is the ECHR required to consider precedent rulings when making a decision?


Yes precedents are set and followed.

No one got promotion after this. The Officer who authorised the threat of torture was taken off all criminal cases, and moved to a desk job. The officer doing the interogating was also moved. Both officers also got suspended fines.


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Profile   Post #: 100
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