Asymmetrical Information

This makes me wonder what they taught the guy in the Virginia prison system.

Terrible, they had to know better! I hold out no hope that the world will the USA credit for denouncing these sick idiots; but we will certainly have it used against us. A big blow to the efforts to change minds in these backward lands.

And the liberals are busting their asses to deny that the guards are all democrats!

hi all,
its clear to me that everyone is really angry at the guards. i think one reason is for the depth of emotion is because we all understand that this is not going to help us in iraq or anywhere else in the middle east.

but one thing: you can call me a liberal, but i do believe in the presumption of innocence, and the need for rational judgement through an examination of the facts. they are still americans. apart from needing to wait till the whole story is out, there are parts of this story which do not gel, with regards to the guards. when the newspapers talk of "civilian contractors" in charge of interrogation, i thought (naively i realize) that we were talking about the acme company or a subsidary of halliburton (or civilian contractors providing security to the central authority--ex special forces types)! i know this was silly, but it took a while for me to realize that this meant-in all likelihood-cia.

i was thinking about the incentives here, and trying to use occam's razor to look for the simplest (and thus most likely) answer. sure--we may have some bad apples here. but isn't it possible, perhaps even likely, that they were "following orders" in order to elicit badly needed information. i am trying to imagine back in the fall, when the resistance was really getting started. there is a lot of pressure--both military and political--to find the culprits. is it hard to imagine that someone, somewhere, did not say "get me that information! americans are dying and american lives are at risk, and we need to stop these bad people! just get me that info!"? do we need explicit orders? i don't think so. will a general ask where the information came from that saved american lives? or how it was extracted? i don't think so, unless they are an extremely moral man.

one could even come to think that these actions themselves as if they were "moral." how? one could make a utilitarian argument along the following lines: hell--when i compare trampling on the "rights" of a few "ragheads" compared to saving american lives and the lives of innocent allied iraqis--its no contest!" inflict the pain. lives are at stake. on that kind of calculus, it can make all kinds of sense.

the problem though in this calculus is the following: what happens if the public finds out? then, the downside becomes horrific, as i think we are about to find out. what i think you will find is upsetting people in authority is not the torture--though i think the revulsion is genuine--but that there is evidence of it. my guess is that politicians are not interested in the dirty little secrets of interrogation. they leave that to the little people who carry out orders--with latitude in interpretation of their instructions. they want results. can we blame them? that is the question...

there have been a number of reports concerning this prison. but no pictures. before the pictures, it was just a series of allegations. now--there is a reality to see.

the reality is that we can do bad things. and we probably did them--not because of sadism--but because we love our country, and we wanted to keep it safe.

the question remains as to what is happening down in cuba. allegations have been made there as well. is there a basis in fact there?

"the reality is that we can do bad things. and we probably did them--not because of sadism--but because we love our country, and we wanted to keep it safe."

Well if you put it like that to the Iraqis ... I'm sure they won't care at all.

Let's have a little perspective. First, the Geneva Convention probably doesn't apply to these prisoners, they are probably terrorist suspects not military POWs. Second, our guys are trying to get information that will allow us to catch more bad guys--the kinds of people who murdered 4 Americans, burned their bodies, and hung them from a bridge. If a little humiliation could force even one of them to give up some information that could prevent more such atrocities, fine.

"there have been a number of reports concerning this prison. but no pictures. " -cas

I keep wondering why the pictures were taken? To what end? Is it possible that it was decided that the effect on the enemy would be greater than the damage to our reputation?
That doesn't make sense; but, if that turns out to be the effect created, (that is to say, if this makes it clear that we will take off the gloves and do anything to win), then, amen.
I watched a Discovery Channel show on the recovery of Liberty Bell 7 yesterday, and Chris Kraft made the point that the loss of the lives of Grissom, White and Chafee, (and the consequent suspension of space missions during the investigation) had allowed them the incorporate the lessons of Mercury and Gemini into the program. And, he argues, without that pause we would not have made it to the moon when we did.
My point of adding that unrelated history here is to illustrate that sometimes we have to fall back to move forward. So, looking for the best from this situation; maybe the ingrates will realize the level of our resolve, and that we can be pushed too far to stay principled.
We aren't there yet, but maybe they will now know that we can go there, and it is time to sue for peace before we have to get medieval on their backsides. I'd much prefer that they join the 21st century, but, I am also not surprised that we have among us are people who have been drawn down to their level.
Long live the highest principles and aspirations of man, soon die those who refuse to join civilization.

Patrick R. Sullivan wrote:

Let's have a little perspective. First, the Geneva Convention probably doesn't apply to these prisoners, they are probably terrorist suspects not military POWs.

(a) How do you know that and (b) and even if so, there are still rules against abuse and torture even for “terrorist suspects.”

Second, our guys are trying to get information that will allow us to catch more bad guys--the kinds of people who murdered 4 Americans, burned their bodies, and hung them from a bridge. If a little humiliation could force even one of them to give up some information that could prevent more such atrocities, fine.

From what I have seen, there does not appear to be any interrogation component to the torture and this seems to be the work of a few sick thugs who got off on this sort of thing. In which case, even for those who might be willing to sanction torture and humiliation of prisoners if they thought it might save lives from a potential terrorist attack, this does not appear to be such a case.

Moreover, since we are trying to (and probably succeeding more than has been reported) win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, how do you square that with images of Americans torturing and humiliating Iraqis? All this did was provide Al-Jazeera, MoveOn.Org, ANSWER, Daily Kos, etc. with their talking points (or images) over how “evil” the United States is and/or how terrible things are over there even though this isn’t representative at all over how coalition soldiers and/or contractors have acted.

There is simply nothing mitigating about these crimes and they made our mission over there a lot more difficult than it has to be.

"From what I have seen, there does not appear to be any interrogation component to the torture and this seems to be the work of a few sick thugs who got off on this sort of thing.'

This is exactly the problem. You haven't "seen" the whole story. Only a few photos (and some of the photos circulating on the internet are bogus. You're drawing conclusion based on very little evidence.

As to how I know these aren't military POWs, well, there are precious few of those as the Iraqi army went home before the invasion. And, this was happening in a special part of the prison where intelligence officers with experience from Gitmo were directing the questioning. We don't really care about regular army types, as they won't have any information worth hearing. What we want to know is from whom and where are these guerilla attacks coming.

So check out CPT Patti's blog already. (I don't have the URL handy, but it's accessible from The Command Post, which is accessible from this blog.) The incident occurred in January, was reported to authorities by a soldier in the unit who saw the photos, and the investigation into this incident has been completed. Three of the soldiers have had their equivalent of a Grand Jury proceeding (Article 32 hearing) and have been referred to a court-martial. The Article 32 hearings of some of the others are still continuing. Higher ups in the chain of command have been suspended from duty and have received reprimands, which is the kiss of death to their military career.

The attorney for the general in overall command of the unit is saying that his client is being made a scapegoat and that the atrocities were committed by the interrogators and not the corrections folks. There were no interrogators in the unit, so they would have been under someone else's command. My understanding is that the photos included people who were corrections folks, which is why the corrections folks (an Army Reserve MP company who've only been trained as traffic cops) are taking it in the ear--they were at least complicit in the acts.

If these acts were committed by corrections folks, they're illegal. If they were committed by interrogation folks, they may or may not be illegal. Eventually we'll get the entire truth out.

You know....ABOUT time we start to get THEIR attention...with something that offends them. Did anyone ask the four that were cut up, drug around and humiliated?? I say ... fine with what they do to extract information...and BE REAL....the Geneva Convention....does not apply to any situation...where the 'other party' (terrorist) does not comply.
Get their attention, then work a deal...ya can't negotiate with one who wants to blow him/herself up...for their god.
Maybe, this might be another stunt the democrats have hatched...to discredit the American troops/Bush?

Posted by cas at May 2, 2004 05:33 PM:

i was thinking about the incentives here, and trying to use occam's razor to look for the simplest (and thus most likely) answer. sure--we may have some bad apples here. but isn't it possible, perhaps even likely, that they were "following orders" in order to elicit badly needed information.

Actually, Occam's Razor militates against the scenario you suggest. The simplest explanation is that some bad apples broke the law. Period. Your scenario requires the postulate of further, unseen bad apples further up the chain of command who conspired with the bad apples we already know about (the actual perpetrators). Because it necessitates that further assumption, Occam's Razor would disfavor that scenario and consider the first, obvious explanation as the more likely because it requires fewer postulates.

(BTW, I've been posting as Occam's Beard for some time; my doing so on this issue is a coincidence.)

Excuse me, but what part of the Geneva Convention says that all bets are off when dealing with illegal combatants?

Even if there was such a get-off-the-hook clause, us taking advantage of it demeans us. No, this is wrong, and I agree with the Sarge completely on this.

Slart,

The part where the Geneva Conventions only apply between signatories that follow the rules. Illegal combatants are termed so because they were not following the rules; therefore, they do not qualify for legal protection under the Geneva Conventions.

That said, I agree that the prisoners' potential lack of coverage by the Geneva Conventions does not justify the treatment they allegedly received. At least according to the reports of sources I trust, the jailers did some horribly wrong things, and deserve to have the book thrown at them--HARD.

'good guys'... 'bad guys'.... the main thing is, now the world knows that americans are like everyone else. this is proof. in terms of world history: more important than 9/11. armageddon is well on. c you on the other side, and hope you are not a bunch of denialist whimpering twits then too.
(by the way, the most famous prisoner abuse in history occurred about 2,000 years ago. the prisoner was sentenced to death and handed over to the troops of the occupying force. they proceeded to strip him and whip him and crown him with thorns. we are told he was put through untold verbal and physical abuse and humiliation. finally, he was nailed alive to two pieces of wood)

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