Asymmetrical Information

The thing about torture, is that there is a moral perspective that supports its use - namely, the "greater good". It is the same moral perspective that supports taxation, the draft, and nearly every other instance of state intrusion on our lives. A line must be drawn. That we draw it at such an extreme as torture is what amazes me. That we allow the state to practice theft, imprisonment, enslavement, and yet think we can somehow draw the line at torture...

In the name of the greater good...

Also, there is the question of whether torture works at all. If I knew about the ticking bomb, I'd just give out misleading information that took long enough to check out that it would be too late in the end.

My guess is most (virtually all actually) of the public holds the same view you state here and would have serious problems with even the rare use of torture. But when I say torture, I'm talking about tearing out people's fingernails or attaching electrodes to their testicles, or even waterboarding. Not nonsense like this: ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10020629/site/newsweek/)

"According to a Southern Command report that came out earlier this year, al-Qatani was forced to perform dog tricks on a leash, was straddled by a female interrogator, told that his mother and sister were whores, forced to wear a woman's bra and thong on his head during interrogation, forced to dance with a male interrogator and subjected to an unmuzzled dog to scare him."

Give me a break. Calling this (or handling a Koran without putting on gloves first) torture is just ridiculous, and it really makes me wonder how accurate other claims of "torture" are. I'm all for outlawing stuff like waterboarding, but if a little hazing will bring uncooperative prisoners around that option should be available.

Torture is wrong.

Doesn't it send up a red flag that in 21st century America torture is being discussed as a legitimate government policy ? What have we descended to ?

Further, doesn't it strike anyone as revolting that the above discussion is couched in the navel-gazing terms of 'price' ?

Last, may I remind you that the 'torturer' is not the President of the United States or the head of the CIA. They may bear ultimate responsibility for issuing orders, but the torturer is the serviceman/woman who inflicts the actual pain. What 'price' are you so cavalierly willing for them to pay ?

I'm with J on this one. Before we can discuss it, though, we need to define it. We have a number of good words that we can use to divide up different things: abuse, torture, annoy, distress, disturb, excruciate, mistreat, irk, vex, worry, stress, etc...

I am against the pulling of fingernails and electrocuting of testicles and that sort of thing. I'm not against disorientation and stress techniques used to reduce inhibitions and confuse subjects IF and ONLY IF they are effective at getting people to talk. If I were captured and interrogated, I'd MUCH rather be deprived of food, kept in a sensory deprivation tank, and given drugs to make me confused than have my eyeballs scoured, my arms flayed, or my body stretched on a rack.

This is not an all or nothing, where the option is either treat them humanely (give them comfy chairs and cable TV) or torture them (deprive them of dessert and/or slice off their fingers). There is a spectrum.

The same thing has happened with sex crimes and sexual abuse. Anyone convicted of any sex-related crime is listed as a sex offendor. The guy who touches women on the shoulder when they don't want him to is equated to a rapist.

EI

hear hear J

medieval activity is bad.

violating someone with a broomstick is bad (this has been done in various university rat/sport hazings), male on female and most male on male sexual behaviours are bad (rape, make believe rape, suggestive comments and demands, etc), most female on male sexual behaviours are ok (to mess with mysogynistic sensibilities, but not going to the point of sex, stimulation, penetration...)

most hazing is fine, as long as people are careful not to actually harm the detainee. behaviours that are not in themselves bad but that carry an undue risk of accidental death (certain positions, sleeping bag maneouvre, etc) should be banned as appropriate (these things should be banned on an actual risk based assessment, along with risk based guidelines on use for moderate risk interrogation methods).

what is exceptionally annoying is that "Torture" is agreed to be bad by everyone, but those who are most against it have the broadest definition of what it is. We can all agree that torture should be illegal and that if it's really necessary it will happen anyways, but the real devil is where do we draw the line between what is inappropriate for domestic criminals and what is inappropriate for terrorist suspects and other non-Geneva detainees.

What I'd like is a detailed discussion of what should not be allowed, and why. Do we give these people full miranda rights? Do we allow anything, do we have a line (as currently) that doesn't damage someone permanently but that can include a bit of smacky face. I personally support the ability to render suspects as a motivating tactic, but not to subvert rules against actual torture. We shouldn't be willing to do anything, but the terrorists should fear that we will, and that we can threaten them with vile things (giving them to the Israelis...). I don't want to win any morality merit badges, I just want to win.

I never envisioned myself as a person who could post a comment in favor of torture, but ...

This topic reminds me of the death penalty debate. To legislate the end of torture is, I think, equivalent to banning the death penalty when what you really desire is limit its use to the most heinous cases.

Like banning the death penalty, if you ban torture completely you lose at least two benefits: First, you make it extremely unlikely that it will actually be used, even when it should. Far fewer people will risk their careers engaging in a banned activity. (And there is a death penalty equivalent to this scenario. Contrast a President who authorizes torture to gain information in a time of imminent peril with a police officer who kills a suspect that he believes will be released to kill again. Both would be committing a banned act because they believe it is for a higher good. The problem is, few would be tempted to commit the banned act simply because it is banned - perhaps even when they should. In addition, you are assuming we would have time for the President to make such a decision. In the world today, I doubt we would have that luxury. It would be a military, CIA or FBI officer making the call.)

Second, you completely lose any deterrent effect implicit in having such a policy, whether or not you routinely use it. Therefore, just as a rarely used death penalty may still have a deterrent effect on crime, the possibility of torture has a deterrent value simply because it could be used.

DRJ makes a good point, its fine to say that in the event torture is called for (the ticking time bomb) that the officers involved will use torture for the greater good. Its quite another to thank them by putting them in federal prison.

We can't ask the military and intelligence communities to accept that punishment as the price of feeling good about ourselves.

Torture is ALREADY illegal. Period. The problem is that many are trying to redefine torture in such a way that it would be illegal treat a prisoner with anything less than deferential respect. Playing rock and roll music and using bright lights to keep someone awake may not be nice, but, until now, it's never been considered torture. Our standard interrogation techniques are generally thought to be effective (else we would not be using them) and they do not result in any long term physical or emotional harm. Do they inflict discomfort (as opposed to pain), stress, confusion, and fear? Yes, but so do a lot of the the things we do for recreation in this country.

Ever try to sleep on the cold, hard, ground? Most of us call that camping. Now, if we force a prisoner to do it, it's called torture. Really, we need to get a proper perspective. "Tired? See this bed? It's soft and warm. Would you like to lie down in it and sleep? Just tell us what we want to know. We'll turn out the lights and turn off the music and you can sleep for as long as you like. When you wake up, we'll give you anything you want for breakfast. Just tell us what we want to know. No? Fine. Stay on the floor. Turn up the music, Sam." It's not nice, but it's very effective and causes no long term harm. There is no reason to deprive our people of this tool.

Like everyone else on the Left and hand-wringers on all teams, Rofe drops his monocle and fans himself vigorously at the thought of "torture" before we've even decided what torture is. This is a deliberate tactic. Everyone agrees torture is a bad thing. No ethical person could support torture. Therefore, they just want everything they don't like to be torture, so anyone who disagrees with them is evil by definition.

Let's try to define actual torture. We all agree that anything using jumper cables, knives, hammers, acid, or pliers is torture. We all agree that beatings are torture. Perhaps we can say that anything that causes physical injury or severe pain is torture. Most would agree that anything intended to cause fear of imminent death, like waterboarding, is also torture.

What about techniques that are intended to produce only physical discomfort and degradation or humiliation? Examples of these are sleep deprivation, sitting or standing in uncomfortable positions, occasional mild shaking, and exploitation of culturally specific fears, like cynophobia and gynophobia? I don't consider this torture. Why is this torture?

A practical difference between actual torture and the things in the second paragraph is that actual torture is not a reliable means of extracting information, and a rational interrogator would only consider using them if there really were a ticking bomb and there were no time to try anything else. The "aggressive interrogation techniques," however, when combined with questioning by a skilled interrogator familiar with the culture and psychology of his subjects, can be very effective. Isn't it these things that the monocle mob wants to outlaw?

The whole "torture" debate is misleading. Actual torture is already illegal, and our people wouldn't use it unless they're sociapathic, grossly incompetent, or truly desperate in a ticking bomb scenario. Outlawing real torture even more won't make a difference. Someone needs to explain to me why the other group of techniques, which aren't torture and which are effective, should be illegal. Should sleep deprivation or panty parties be considered torture as much as shocks and pulling out teeth? Why? Why should it not matter that waterboarding doesn't help produce reliable information while standing all night can? Why don't these differences matter?

I expect something more than neck-craning, chin-jutting proclamations like, "It steals our national soul!" or "OMG I can't believe you support torture!"

Let's be even more clear about this.

(1) Torture is illegal in the U.S. It is not necessarily illegal outside the U.S.

(2) Torture (however you define it) is effective when done by trained people, but not when done by untrained or poorly trained people, which is why coerced confessions are no longer allowed in our criminal justice system.

(3) I disagree that making someone fear that they are in danger of imminent death is torture.

(4) There are different types of coercion, i.e., physical, psychological, and chemical. All types should be examined in the discussion. I see no difference between causing permanent physical injury and causing permanent psychological injury.

(5) There are different degrees of coercion. Should some coercive tactics always be verbotten, or does it depend on the threat? Who decides? Who monitors?

There is a very simple definition of torture: It is anything that would make you explode in outrage if it was perpetrated by our enemies upon one of our captured/kidnapped troops.

Any weaker definition of the word exposes a hypocrisy beyond belief.

Silly Jane...everybody knows that torture is only wrong when done by Americans, especially when a Republican is in the White House.

the trouble with the torture for a ticking bomb scenario is it is just that..
a movie plot device..

that excuse is an opening for the gov to torture thousands each day to "uncover " any would-be bomb plot...lacking hindsight you will never know who to torture and for how long...''

bogus to the max

There is a very simple definition of torture: It is anything that would make you explode in outrage if it was perpetrated by our enemies upon one of our captured/kidnapped troops.

That's not bad, for people discussing it in good faith. But suppose Congress passed that as a law (by the way, I think such a law would be a sensible part of their job, although I'm not terribly familiar with the UCMJ). If a charge was brought, the lawyers would each argue their own side, and appropriately so. The judge could not explode in outrage to test the theory of the law.

So it's simple, but it's not enough.

Plus, I'm strongly convinced that even if we only adopt that as a working definition so that Congress uses it internally to build an explicit policy... We'd have a lot of outraged exploding politicians. They're kinda hair-triggerred, aren't they?

So I'd rather not adopt a definition that involves emotion. Morality and ethics are definable and workable without reference to emotions, as is shown by the continuous development of the "just war" doctrine and its influence on the concept of war crimes.

-Billy

As an active military pilot, I have to chime in with those who question the current defination of torture, esp in the outraged medai reports. If I had the choice of capture by one of two groups, one of which will keep me awake and offend my religious sensibilities, while the other will decapitate me with a dull knife on camera, my choice would be pretty simple.

I will caveat that with the acknowledgement that some people have clearly committed illegal acts, but redefining loud music as torture in order to create a larger, widespread pattern of abuse is a cheap argument.

Doesn't it send up a red flag that in 21st century America torture is being discussed as a legitimate government policy? What have we descended to?

Evidently we’ve descended to the point where any interrogation technique used on terrorist suspects that might make them feel uncomfortable is now met with hysteric cries of “torture!”

I will join the dogpile and make the same argument as everyone else: of course torture is wrong and should be illegal. But a lot of the things "anti-torture" advocates are against simply do not constitute torture in any reasonable way. As David Walser correctly pointed out, sleep deprivation sucks but it's not exactly genital electrocution.

Jack's "simple definition" is worthless. Let me put it this way: I'd be happy if our troops killed every jihadi in Iraq. But I'm outraged by each death the jihadis inflict on our soldiers. Does that make me a hypocrite? Please. It just means I'm a partisan who wants bad things to happen to their guys and good things to happen to our guys.

I wouldn't want any of our guys to suffer sleep deprivation. But it won't trouble my conscience if we did it to their guys. They are, after all, the enemy.

The problem with outlawing torture or redefining it so that anything other than a stern look is prohibited can be simply illustated -

On the battlefield there is great risk in taking prisoners. This risk is acceptable given the expection that the information gained from the source will outweigh the risk encountered in their capture.

It's a given that those captured will now refuse to cooperate as there is no cost to them of not cooperating.

As a soldier, the calculus to put yourself or other soldiers in your unit at peril given this set of circumstances is quite quickly arrived at - you simply shoot the enemy combatant.

> There is a very simple definition of torture: It is anything that would make you explode in outrage if it was perpetrated by our enemies upon one of our captured/kidnapped troops.

Simple, yet wrong.

I'm outraged when they shoot at our troops, captured or not, yet even actually shooting them isn't torture. Heck, I'm outraged when they capture our troops.

What? You're not outraged by such actions against our troops? Or, you think that it's wrong for me to use that example? Surely someone using loaded definitions can't object when someone else uses them.

I don't think it's so clear. It may be better for the politicians involved to go to some remote town unlikely to be nuked, say anywhere but NYC and DC, and let the nuke go off. In this situation they have zero chance of dying from terrorism and run zero risk of being sent to prison by a journey.

And if voters learn that these same politicians had someone in custody who might have been able to provide information to prevent such an attack but they lacked the will to do whatever was necessary to get the information, you can put their chances of every being reelected at zero and chances of either being forced to resign or removed from office at 100 percent.

There is a very simple definition of torture: It is anything that would make you explode in outrage if it was perpetrated by our enemies upon one of our captured/kidnapped troops. Any weaker definition of the word exposes a hypocrisy beyond belief.

It exposes a willingness to spend more than three seconds thinking about the question.

Other people have already pointed out the gaping holes in your "outrage" standard. I'd like to address the other major problem with your idea: it addresses neither what the individuals in question have done nor the reasons for acting upon them. Beating the person you just caught planting pipe-bombs in a schoolyard in order to get him to confess where he got the explosives from is not morally equivalent to beating a captured soldier in order to humiliate and degrade him.

It is not "hypocrisy" to take a utilitarian approach to the morality of torture. Unless you believe that all forms of war are always and in every case immoral, you must necessarily accept that it can be morally acceptable to horribly violate other people's rights for the sake of some greater good -- that is, after all, what war does. The question is not whether torture is sometimes morally acceptable (the answer is "yes, it is"), but whether those circumstances are common and/or significant enough for it to be worth the risk of granting the government that kind of power.

As far as I know and have heard and have read about, live electrodes were never attached to any prisoners in Iraq--but "dead" electrodes were as part of the psychological coercion process.

But I do know that wires from a EE-8 field telephone were attached to prisoners in Vietnam and a 90 volt ringing signal sent down the line. I heard that it was very effective.

You want me to be outraged over actions designed to protect my fellow troops when in combat? Sorry, not me. And don't try to give me guff about if we don't follow the Geneva Convention then our enemies won't either. Our last enemies who followed the Geneva Convention were the Nazis.

Other people have already pointed out the gaping holes in your "outrage" standard. I'd like to address the other major problem with your idea: it addresses neither what the individuals in question have done nor the reasons for acting upon them. Beating the person you just caught planting pipe-bombs in a schoolyard in order to get him to confess where he got the explosives from is not morally equivalent to beating a captured soldier in order to humiliate and degrade him.

A year or so ago, the Army and Red Cross issued their reports on complaints of abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, they found the majority of alleged incidents occurred at the point of capture (when the detainee was most likely to be resisting) or when they were in the custody of the locals prior to being transferred to Coalition forces.

Just another factor to consider when we hear about “X number of detainees reported being abused.”

I'm okay with the dull knives and electrodes when circumstances warrant them.

When are they warrented? Oh, the ticking time bomb weapon sounds about right, so long as we can be certain that the person being tortured does, in fact, know where the bomb is located.

Think of it this way. Suppose one of your children was abducted by a child molester and locked up in a secret location without food or water. Your baby will die if she is not freed within a few days. You discover that the molester is actually your child's sports coach and decide to take your shotgun and confron him. When you ask the coach where your son or daughter is being held captive, he laughs in your face.

I'd do anything -- and I mean anything -- to make the molester talk. Electrodes, racks, rusty knives, you name it. If this torture doens't work, that's okay, at least I tried.

And what would you say about a parent who *wouldn't* use torture under these circumstanecs? I'd say that "parent" is contemptable. I certainly wouldn't salute them for their moral courage.

Most here would agree with the use of torture under these circumstances. The problem with basing a general rule on this particular hypothetical situation, obviously, is twofold. First, we are talking about giving the state the power to torture. That power can be abused. Second, there is the question of innocence. Sometimes you know that the person you are torturing does, in fact, have valuable information. If we caputre Bin Laden or Al Zarqawi alive, we will know with 100% certainty that they are in posession of valuable information. But the same cannot be said of some low-level terrorist cell member, or a person arrested on suspicion of being a part of a terrorist cell. Things like this might make us want to strictly limit the use of torture.

But I still wouldn't categorically rule out the use of even the most extreme forms of torture. All options have to be kept on the table.

Iconclast:

The problem with your perspective is that there is testimony frm torture victims some of the psychological methods are most destructive.

For example sensory deprivation can be equivalent to given someone LSD. This is powerful stuff and people who just assume they know the effects have decided they are experts.

I'm really surprised by how many people posting here seem to have little difficulty with the idea of the United States torturing captives.

First, I think we need to ignore the fringe left groups defining anything and everything as torture, and discuss real torture. Embarrassing someone, offending them or their religious beliefs, making them uncomfortable, and misleading them are not torture.

But we have our own military members saying they have seen prisoners feet beaten with hammers until all the bones in the foot are broken. They have been burned with hot metal, producing softball sized blisters. They are beaten so regularly and so harshly that several hundred have been beaten to death. Beaten to death... hundreds... let that sink in for a minute.

Have you read about waterboarding, or do you just assume it's like bobbing for apples? Do a little Googling about it, it is quite harsh. It involves a significant amount of pain, forced inhalation of water into the lungs, and drowning close to the point of death. A doctor revives the prisoner and oxygen is put into the lungs - and then the process is immediately repeated.

I'm not a dove, not on the left, etc. I would be considered a very mainstream, middle of the road American, and I tell you: These things bother me a great deal, and I truly believe they should be illegal and that illegality enforced.

Please realize that these things are going on, and don't discuss torture as defined by the worst of the moonbats here. We aren't discussing whether or not it is OK to crease the cover of a Koran.

They are beaten so regularly and so harshly that several hundred have been beaten to death. Beaten to death... hundreds... let that sink in for a minute.

Cite please.

> Beaten to death... hundreds... let that sink in for a minute.

Hint - if your arguement requires stage directions, perhaps you don't actually have an arguement.

The cave bombing campaign crushed and or suffocated hundreds of people. Does it bother me? Nope, and we didn't even ask them a single question. Does asking them a question really change things?

Moreover, there have been so many refuted claims of abuse that you're going to have to actually provide enough information for us to check. I've followed up on a number of supposed first-hand claims and found that they were "I heard" and the like and quickly fell apart under scrutiny, except for the ones that weren't actually torture. (Sorry, but fake menstrual blood doesn't count.)

I'm embarrassed to say I'm not finding the cite easily (and I'm not at all the type to throw acusations around casually - so I will keep looking).

The news article I read that in discussed the number of deaths among those we hold captive, compared to what would normally be expected in a population of that size, and reasons why the actual death rate was orders of magnitude above the statistically expected one. This article would have been within the last two weeks. Does that ring a bell with anyone else?

I'll continue to look. The other instances (broken feet, burns, etc) were from Capt Fishback's recent testimony.

But we have our own military members saying they have seen prisoners feet beaten with hammers until all the bones in the foot are broken.

We have our own military members saying they've personally worked on UFOs at Area 51, too. Don't equate "a soldier said it" with "it definitely happened".

They are beaten so regularly and so harshly that several hundred have been beaten to death. Beaten to death... hundreds... let that sink in for a minute.

The relevant question is "how many innocent people were beaten to death", not "how many people were beaten to death". The problem with torture is that we can't usually be sure the person being tortured is guilty. If we could somehow know that those "hundreds" were really Al Qaeda, then the appropriate response would, in my opinion, be "nice work, guys, keep it up".

Please realize that these things are going on, and don't discuss torture as defined by the worst of the moonbats here.

The problem is that "the worst of the moonbats" includes Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Red Cross, countless high-profile politicians and pundits, and most of the major news outlets. If it was just a few losers at DailyKos saying "disrespecting the Koran = torture" that would be one thing. But it's not just them, it's the majority of the anti-war faction and some of the pro-war types as well.

Our last enemies who followed the Geneva Convention were the Nazis.

And the last time we officially declared war was WWII. Coincidence?

So much for the rules of war.

> I'm not a dove, not on the left, etc. I would be considered a very mainstream, middle of the road American

Irrelevant. Moreover, the claim isn't evidence. The only evidence we do have is a repetition of the left's rants.

I'd like to address 2 arguments against torture that seem to keep coming up.

The first argument is that if we do it, then they do it to our soldiers. That argument only works when fighters on both sides are uniformed soldiers as we all understand it. Uniformed soldiers are prepared to die in combat, but are generally unwilling to throw their life away. So when the wat is over, they all too happy to put down their weapons on both sides and recognise their opponents for the human beings that they are. If our opponents are sawing off the heads of civilians, what do you think they'll do if they caught one of our soldiers? Nearly all soldiers are against torture of enemy soldiers, but I'd be willing to bet they have no problem with torture of Zarqawi when we get him.

The second argument that keeps getting repeated is that torture doesn't work because the victim will tell you anything. This is far too simplistic. One counterexample - you ask the prisoner about a mixture of things (some of which you already know the answer to). Once you demonstrate that you caught him in a lie, up goes the torture level. An uglier counter example might be to threaten things more that might be more important than his life like his family or his entry into the afterlife. A hundred years ago the British army smeared dead terrorists in pig's blood thereby instantly preventing their entry to paradise. That approach might be insulting to some muslims, but surely not to the muslim wedding party that was recently blown up in Jordan.
All nasty stuff, I agree

And the last time we officially declared war was WWII. Coincidence?

Yes. We declared war on Japan, too, and they ignored the Geneva Conventions.

One perspective that seems to have been missed in the above comments is the practicality of legalising torture. As far as I am aware, only two countries have tried doing this in the modern era: France and Israel, both fighting counter insurgency wars against an enemy that was quite keen on random acts of terrorism. Also as far as I am aware, both wanted to legalise it so they could put a process in place to have some sort of review of the need for it and the bounds beyond which the torturer cannot go. In both cases , legalisation seems to have failed utterly. Not only did it not restrict torture to the extreme ticking bomb cases and ensure it was only done within strict limits, by legalising the option it seems to have increased its use as it was now a legitimate option.

I’ll concede that neither the French nor the Israelis are at the cutting edge of human rights but both are advanced civilised countries. If they can’t make it work why would we expect that anyone else can, especially when the threat faced is arguably worse in terms than that faced in Algeria or Palestine?

Because of this, regardless of whether you think torture should be used or not (like most people I fall into the extreme circumstances category although in practice these may never arise and if the child kidnapper has my kids scenario arose there would be no limits to what I was prepared to do – not that this is necessarily a useful guide for policy of course) it seems pretty clear it should remain safe, rare and illegal.

Logician writes:

>>>"The first argument is that if we do it, then they do it to our soldiers. That argument only works when fighters on both sides are uniformed soldiers as we all understand it. Uniformed soldiers are prepared to die in combat, but are generally unwilling to throw their life away."

Well, the problem with this "War on Terror", is that "Terror" is not an actual nation state. The Bush Administration claims that the "front lines" of the "War on Terror" is in Iraq. The problem with your thesis is that we not only have uniformed military personnel in Iraq, but armed civilian mercenary contractors, reconstruction officials and employees, etc. numbering in the thousands.

>>>"As the violence of the protracted war continues and some 75,000 civilian employees struggle to rebuild the war-torn nation and support the military, contractor casualties mount. Their deaths have more than tripled in the past 13 months...
As of Monday, 428 civilian contractors had been killed in Iraq and another 3,963 were injured, according to Department of Labor insurance-claims statistics obtained by Knight Ridder...
Those statistics, which experts said were the most comprehensive listing available on the toll of the war, are far from complete: Two of the biggest contractors in Iraq said their casualties were higher than the figures the Labor Department had for them." LINK

There are no official battle lines in a "War on Terror", so a civilian contractor, worker or even journalist is fair game.

>>>"Iraq presents ideal conditions for kidnappings. The country is mired in conflict. Government authority is weak. Police are largely ineffectual. On top of this, the country is filled with guns and explosives, along with large numbers of unemployed veterans skilled in violence...
Taking advantage of the breakdown in authority after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, criminal gangs began kidnapping Iraqis, at first targeting mainly Christians who had no protection from Iraq's tribal structure. When Iraqi resistance groups started kidnapping foreign civilians in April of last year, some analysts warned that kidnappings would increase as kidnappers honed their skills, creating domestic crises for coalition partners. Corporations and some governments would put money on (or under) the table to save lives and get out of difficult situations, thereby encouraging further kidnappings...
In the past 12 months, well over 200 civilians from 36 countries have been kidnapped. Precise figures are hard to come by; some kidnappings are not reported while efforts are underway to bring about the release of the hostages. Nearly two-thirds of the hostages have been released; a handful escaped or were rescued...
Between 15 and 20 percent were killed, at least 15 by beheading. If roughly the same outcomes apply to the remaining hostages still held or unaccounted for; the percentage murdered by their captors would come to 20 percent. This is roughly twice the fatality rate seen in Colombia or other countries where kidnapping is endemic but the goals are primarily economic. Iraqi kidnappers clearly are a deadlier bunch, and they have used the threat of beheadings and other forms of murder as an effective part of their campaign of terror." LINK

Now, that's just with the "War on Terror." Remember, there are Americans all over this planet, operating in governments both polite and not. If the message we send to the world is similiar to THIS one:

ACLU lead counsel Lucas Guttentag said the lion cage was not mentioned in the initial legal filing because lawyers considered that part of the charges of mock executions, which would later be detailed. He said media reports in summer 2003 documented that American soldiers had access to the lions."LINK

Obviously, the two who make this claim either didn't have the information their captors were looking for, or didn't have enough evidence against them to hold them any further. Either way, what possible good can come out of a story like this other than creating an additional recruitment poster
Al Qaeda already has due to our activities?

--Cobra

There are no official battle lines in a "War on Terror", so a civilian contractor, worker or even journalist is fair game.

Not under the Geneva Conventions. You're correct that the terrorists view such people as "fair game", but then the terrorists view everyone from newborn babies to trained US Special Forces personnel as "fair game" -- nobody is off-limits, in their view.

The news article I read that in discussed the number of deaths among those we hold captive, compared to what would normally be expected in a population of that size, and reasons why the actual death rate was orders of magnitude above the statistically expected one. This article would have been within the last two weeks. Does that ring a bell with anyone else?

Yes, it sounds an awful lot like "100,000 dead Iraqis."

Voice, earlier in these comments you said:

"But we have our own military members saying they have seen prisoners feet beaten with hammers until all the bones in the foot are broken. They have been burned with hot metal, producing softball sized blisters. They are beaten so regularly and so harshly that several hundred have been beaten to death. Beaten to death... hundreds... let that sink in for a minute."

Other commenters asked you to cite a source for these allegations but you apparently have been unable to provide one. I thought I'd help you out. You can find allegations of torture in Iraq here:
http://www.pownetwork.org/gulf/us_district_court%20_suit.htm
and here:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engMDE140081997?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\IRAQ
and here:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/IRAQ955.htm

Oops ... maybe this isn't what you meant.

Gosh Cobra - I don't think you really addressed logician's point except in a very tangential way.
The point appeared to be a simple one - we are not dealing with uniformed soldiers on both sides.

You kicked up a lot of dust with a discussion about civilian contractors. What does that have to do with anything?

You then use hearsay from 2 ex-prisoners to make some other larger generalisation. Well, the mayor of New Orleans claimed some babies got raped in the Superdome, but that doesn't mean that our society is full of baby-rapists.

Also, if you want to propagate such a story, then you should attach to it the caveat that the Al Qaeda training manual specifically recommends that they awll claim mistreatment when captured.

Let's try to stay focused

"Our last enemies who followed the Geneva Convention were the Nazis."

"Hogans Heroes" was not a documentary.

Of course we're against torture. But again it comes down to definitions, because the way the word "torture" is being employed in the present debate is highly misleading.

Given a choice, I'd take the worst "torture" of which our military has been accused over the treatment I routinely received in civilian jails after traffic stops here in the US...let alone what the terrorists do to our people when they get the chance.

Gazzer writes:

>>>"Gosh Cobra - I don't think you really addressed logician's point except in a very tangential way.
The point appeared to be a simple one - we are not dealing with uniformed soldiers on both sides.

You kicked up a lot of dust with a discussion about civilian contractors. What does that have to do with anything?"

It has everything to do with it. Simply gathering up "suspicious looking subjects" (racial profiling, anyone?) subjecting them to torture, and then releasing them is a sure way to build a more popular insurgency. As far as heresay, one could reasonably argue that this entire war was based upon heresay, since the baseline arguments weren't proven to be accurate.

--Cobra

Cobra, the military is not that stupid. They are well aware of the popular resentment generated by arrests en masse, arrests pursuant to a tip from an unreliable informer, etc.

This sort of thing used to happen during Vietnam. A Vietnamese informant working for the US might be active in the black market on the side. One day he lies to the US Army, telling them that his chief rival in the black market is actually a VC informer. He does this so that the US Army will eliminate his main source of competition.

The military is well aware of problems like this. If you knew any military history, you'd realize that. Instead, you claim that our clueless soldiers just go around arresting and torturing Iraqis, without any real intelligence, thereby alienating them and fomenting the insurgency.

No doubt innocent Iraqis have been captured and perhapse even tortured. But the military does indeed take steps to prevent this.

As I recall, we unknowingly captured Al Zarqaqwi and one of his lieutenants a few times, and then let them go, because we had no evidence against them.

You are just wrong about this. Wrong. You just didn't know that the military is aware of the problem that you are describing, that it has been going on forever, and that we take steps to deal with it.

> Simply gathering up "suspicious looking subjects" (racial profiling, anyone?)

Hint - Iraq is fairly mono-ethnic. There's no one else to pick up.

Would Cobra be happy if the US imported some Chinese and Caucasians and picked them up instead?

Cobra, come on... racial profiling? Were these prisoners not IN Iraq? What does a Baathist look like? Or do you suggest that American troops are imprisoning just about every Iraqi since, by and large, they're all dark-skinned Arab-looking types? "Racial profiling" has zero to do with why these prisoners were imprisoned, and I'm sure you must know it.

As to the lion cage... unconfirmed as of 17 hours ago (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-11-15T220825Z_01_MCC579674_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-LIONS.xml&archived=False), and it seems to me that lions are not a terribly efficient torture device, especially for torturing only two people (no other similar allegations have appeared). Show me an Army lion specialist. Keeping lions in captivity is not like having a housecat. I suppose it's remotely possible that Saddam or one of his underlings was keeping lions, for decoration or recreation, and back in 2003 soldiers could have come across the lions and, before they could be transported to zoos or put down, used them in interrogations, but wow, what a stretch. The allegation itself sounds like those silly things about American guards ritualistically defacing the Koran: too culturally specific by half. It'd be like (OK, only sorta like - crummy example coming up) an American prisoner, captured by al Qaeda, claiming that his guards had tortured him by forcing him to eat undercooked chicken or watch Howard the Duck - things that Americans care about a whole lot more than members of al Qaeda. (Except that al Qaeda isn't known for this type of "torture.")

I just blogged on this subject, and I commend to everyone's attention Belmont Club's recent post on the subject (http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/11/be-he-neer-so-vile.html). Don't forget about extraordinary rendition and the likely effects of over-circumscribing American interrogators' available methods. As humanitarians (which I assume all commenters here are), would you rather see a prisoner in American hands even without more stringent controls than currently exist, or in the custody of, say, Saudi Arabia?

Hint - Iraq is fairly mono-ethnic. There's no one else to pick up.

Would Cobra be happy if the US imported some Chinese and Caucasians and picked them up instead?

Indeed.

The larger point here is not Cobra's claims about racial profiling, or getting the population riled up "if" it's done incorrectly, or the "heresay" that led us into war. It's the continuous kicking up of dust by introducing new topics into the conversation without properly addressing the subject at hand.

When in doubt, change the subject.......

Would Cobra be happy if the US imported some Chinese and Caucasians and picked them up instead?

I'm going to go with "yes" on that one.

Minor point: Iraq isn't mono-ethnic, it is mono-racial.

We didn't abide by the Genva Convention in WWII either, since it prohibits targeting civilians.

It's ridiculous to expect either side to obey rules in a war anyway. The only goal in war is to win.

We should not engage in torture. Not because refraining from it will encourage the other side to treat our soldiers fairly. Not because engaging in it will encourage the insurgency. Not because it is a hardship on our own soldiers, although these are all good reasons.

We should not engage in torture because that is the right thing to do.

We didn't abide by the Genva Convention in WWII either, since it prohibits targeting civilians.

Anyone else see the obvious flaws in this claim?

Minor point: Iraq isn't mono-ethnic, it is mono-racial.

Not to go even further off-topic but aren’t Arabs considered to be Caucasian?

We didn't abide by the Genva Convention in WWII either, since it prohibits targeting civilians.

Actually, the provisions of the Geneva Conventions are non-binding when your opponent either (a) has violated the provision in question or (b) isn't a signatory to the treaty.

Both Japan and Germany had been mass-murdering civilians for years before we ever started targeting their civilian populations. A case could be made that we were morally wrong to do so, but we weren't in violation of the G.C.

I don't have a problem with torture of terrorists. If I can save a city, I figure the citizens of that city are my peers and they should decide my fate. After-thought: Don't we have chemical compounds that can aid in getting information out of the terrorists without actually causing physical damage? So perhaps this discussion is a moot point?

"We should not engage in torture because that is the right thing to do"

Oh well, that settles it then. I guess we've all been wasting our time here debating something that is self-evident.

I will repeat myself to reinforce the point that many here have actively sought to obscure.

Cobra writes:

>>>"Well, the problem with this "War on Terror", is that "Terror" is not an actual nation state. The Bush Administration claims that the "front lines" of the "War on Terror" is in Iraq."

Which means there are OTHER fields of battle in this "War on Terror," including the United States, which makes my line about racial profiling absolutely relevant.

Joe Schmoe writes:

>>>"Cobra, the military is not that stupid. They are well aware of the popular resentment generated by arrests en masse, arrests pursuant to a tip from an unreliable informer, etc."

It's not just the military engaged in this behavior.

>>>"The United States has detained more than 83,000 foreigners in the four years of the war on terror, enough to nearly fill the NFL's largest stadium.

The administration defends the practice of holding detainees in prisons from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay as a critical tool to stop the insurgency in Iraq, maintain stability in Afghanistan and get known and suspected terrorists off the streets.

Roughly 14,500 detainees remain in U.S. custody, primarily in Iraq...

...The detentions and interrogations have brought complaints from Congress and human-rights groups about how the detainees — often Arab and male — are treated.

International law and treaty obligations forbid torture and inhumane treatment...

...As of March, 108 detainees were known to have died in U.S. military and CIA custody, including 22 who died when insurgents attacked Abu Ghraib and others who died of natural causes.

At least 26 deaths have been investigated as criminal homicides."
LINK

The same article also talks about STATESIDE "renditions"--

>>>"About 100 to 150 people are believed to have been grabbed by CIA officers and sent to their home countries or to other nations where they were wanted for prosecution, a procedure called "rendition."

Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are known to cooperate."

In other words, people are being snatched off the streets on THIS continent, and spirited off to foreign countries with more lax attitudes regarding torture.

>>>"The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership's intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago.

The provision, part of the massive bill introduced Friday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist organizations but have not been tried on or convicted of any charges. Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong House Judiciary Committee meeting, but it survived on a party-line vote..."

...In 2002, the Justice Department, in a case that has earned international condemnation, approved the expedited removal of a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, to Syria, a country whose long record of torture has been criticized publicly by Bush.

Arar, who U.S. authorities have said they suspect of links to a terrorist group, alleges that his Syrian captors tortured him during his 375 days in prison. He disputes U.S. claims. Freed last year by Syria, he lives in Canada with his family and has never been arrested or charged with a crime by Canada or the United States.

"Is it an inconvenience if we can't send people back to torturers? Sure," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "But since Abu Ghraib, everyone from the president to the Defense Department to Congress has said the United States does not have a policy of torture. If this passes, we will have a policy of tolerating torture."

LINK

I cite the similarities with police racial profiling because this nation in particular, has a nasty little history of rounding up non-white "suspects", and submitting them to everything from unhumane treatment, to beatings to even torture.

>>>"Police Torture

>>>"We'd just beat people in general....to show who was in charge.

- Former NYPD officer Bernard Cawley (nicknamed "The Mechanic" for tuning people up, or beating them, frequently) at Mollen Commission hearings."

Link

To summarize, I am vehemently opposed to torture, due not in small measure to the fact that I as a black man living in America may find myself a VICTIM of it from my fellow citizens.

--Cobra

Cobra - well done for standing up against the racial profiling in Iraq that targets Arab males.

Gazzer writes:

>>>"Cobra - well done for standing up against the racial profiling in Iraq that targets Arab males."

So you're saying that Arab males in Iraq shouldn't have any better luck than black males like me in America?

--Cobra

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that you missed my point. (Hint - try to find a bad guy in Iraq who isn't an Arab).

Also, I refrained from reacting to your earlier comment about your black maleness. But now that you've shoved it down our throat once more, I guess that allows me to guess some more personal details about you.... angry black-history professor with lots of time on his hands?

How else to explain the rants, the rhetorical dead-ends, the use of blackness as a trump card, the numerous citations designed to beat your interlocutor into submission rather than enlighten them?

Well, here's an exercise for you - try to guess the race / religion / sexual identity of other posters to this site. Do it quietly. Then reflect on the fact that the rest of us are able to rationally discuss a diversity of topics without having to deal these cheap trump cards.

Gazzer writes:

>>>"Then reflect on the fact that the rest of us are able to rationally discuss a diversity of topics without having to deal these cheap trump cards."

If you consider supporting TORTURE a "rational discussion" then my "cheap trump card" is the ace of spades. One facet of this blog I'll always find fascinating is the propensity of people to champion policies that will not likely affect them personally. If it affects their fellow man adversely, there are many on this blog who will rationalize or excuse it based upon class, race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, etc.
If you have a problem with my responding to such tactics, then that is a problem you'll just have to deal with.

>>>"I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that you missed my point. (Hint - try to find a bad guy in Iraq who isn't an Arab)."

Most of the Iranians who have infiltrated Iraq are not "Arabs" but Persians. Second, there are plenty of "bad guys" running around as mercenary contractors who aren't loyal to any country, or follow any military authority, and they aren't "Arabs" either, which answers Thorley Wilson's question, as well as Andy Freeman's.

HERE

And HERE

So the don't have to import caucasians to Iraq. We already have them in place.

--Cobra

Not getting your point, Cobra... Should racial profiling then be used against Caucasians (in its strictest sense) in Iraq?

Your being against TORTURE is evident on its face, and I haven't heard anyone here who is a gleeful advocate of TORTURE in what used to be its commonly understood meaning. The question under debate is, what is the effect of making torture either explicitly legal or explicitly illegal, including a definitional effect?

Your "in other words" to your quote,

">>>"About 100 to 150 people are believed to have been grabbed by CIA officers and sent to their home countries or to other nations where they were wanted for prosecution, a procedure called "rendition."

Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are known to cooperate."

In other words, people are being snatched off the streets on THIS continent, and spirited off to foreign countries with more lax attitudes regarding torture.

...is a pretty obvious mischaracterization of the quote itself. People aren't being randomly snatched off the street and randomly spirited off to torturers; these are people from and often wanted in other countries, who are being returned to those countries. Extraordinary rendition would not, for instance, be used on you, unless you're from or wanted in Syria.

I am very nervous about rendition, but (or perhaps "and" is a better conjunction) in a United States in which sleep deprivation and loud music are off the table, I can only conjecture an uptick in its use. I repeat, "As humanitarians (which I assume all commenters here are), would you rather see a prisoner in American hands even without more stringent controls than currently exist, or in the custody of, say, Saudi Arabia?"

To drag racial profiling back into it, would you, yourself, rather live in the United States or in (say) Japan, where your skin color is far less common than here and, to my understanding, discrimination against you on that basis would be still pretty much open and accepted? How about in Iraq? It's philosophically insufficient, in the end, to say that the U.S. is relatively better than other countries on these and similar moral grounds, but in practical terms, doesn't that relativity matter?

While I appreciate Cobra's self-interest, torture laws aren't likely to have any effect. Since the bad things done to Blacks in the US were done by Democrats, perhaps he'd be better off opposing them.

Cobra - so you spotted a propensity for people on this blog to champion policies that will not affect them personally? How would you know?

You're the only one who uses his background under the mistaken assumption that it adds heft to an argument.

If you can jump to conclusions over something that basic, how will you get credibility on anything else?

try to find a bad guy in Iraq who isn't an Arab

Kurds are not Arabs. (Not saying Kurds are bad guys, just pointing out that all Iraqis are not Arabs).

dish family guide hbo network program

Kurds are not Arabs.

Yes, there are multiple ethnic groups in Iraq.

However, they're all racially caucasian with dark hair and complexions, so it is a bit silly to think that one group is being "profiled" and the others aren't.

Sorry, I meant to say "with predominantly dark hair and complexions".

Dan writes:

>>>"However, they're all racially caucasian with dark hair and complexions, so it is a bit silly to think that one group is being "profiled" and the others aren't...
...Sorry, I meant to say "with predominantly dark hair and complexions".

Once more--This "War on Terror" is NOT restricted within the borders of Iraq. Second, I will quote from Amnesty International about THEIR definition of "racial profiling."

>>>"Q: What is Racial Profiling?

A: According to Professor David Harris of the University of Toledo College of Law, a leading expert on racial profiling, criminal profiles are a set of personal and behavioral characteristics associated with particular offenses that police use to predict who may commit crimes in the future, or identify what type of person may have committed a particular crime for which no credible suspect has been identified or eye-witness description provided. Criminal profiling becomes racial profiling when these characteristics include race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion."

It goes further...

>>>"Q: Have U.S. post-9/11 policies endorsed racial profiling?

A: Yes. Here are some examples:
A reported 1,200 people of Middle-Eastern descent were rounded up in a sweep for suspects immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Many were detained and in June 2003, a report by the Office of the Inspector General found significant problems in the way the detainees were treated. These included: untimely access to the phone, to legal counsel, to family; prolonged detention based on unclear and under-funded FBI clearance policy; and physical and verbal abuse by prison officials.
In 2002 the government introduced the National Security Entry/Exit Registration System (NSEERS), requiring men age 16 and over from 24 Muslim and Middle-Eastern countries and N. Korea to report for registration and interrogation at their local INS. As a result, over 13,000 men have been placed in deportation proceedings, mostly on account of minor immigration violations or due to their immigration case being caught in INS backlogs. Although the government initially stated that this policy would eventually expand to all visitors to the U.S., their position has now been reversed. NSEERS will not expand to visitors from other countries.
During the buildup to the war with Iraq, the U.S. government compiled a list of 50,000 Iraqi nationals in the United States and targeted them for "voluntary interviews" based solely on their national origin."

LINK

Apparently, your profile definition "racially caucasian with predominantly dark hair and complexions" could get you into trouble at pro sporting events:

Racial Profiling Alleged at NFL Game

And can get you DEAD on the London Subway system:

Innocent Man Killed by Police

But back to the topic at hand: TORTURE

Jamie writes:

>>>"People aren't being randomly snatched off the street and randomly spirited off to torturers; these are people from and often wanted in other countries, who are being returned to those countries. Extraordinary rendition would not, for instance, be used on you, unless you're from or wanted in Syria."

I wish I could place as much faith in post-Patriot Act America as you do. I simply cannot. There are too many verifiable horror stories out there for me to dismiss the imminent threat to civil liberties hanging over the heads of Americans.

>>>"Under Section 201, a federal court decision requiring the government to reveal the identities of people it has detained since the 9-11 terrorist attacks can be overturned. The draft reads:

"The government need not disclose information about individuals detained in investigations of terrorism until . . . the initiation of criminal charges"--no matter how long it takes.

If passed by Congress, it would be the first time in history that secret arrests are specifically permitted under American law.

Under Section 501, an American citizen who provides "material support" to a group the government has designated a "terrorist organization" can be stripped of his citizenship. Now, an American can lose his citizenship only by declaring a clear intent to abandon his country.

The proposed bill says an "intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct." It is unclear which bureaucrats would do the "inferring."

LINK

Jamie writes:

>>>"To drag racial profiling back into it, would you, yourself, rather live in the United States or in (say) Japan, where your skin color is far less common than here and, to my understanding, discrimination against you on that basis would be still pretty much open and accepted?"

Well, I have personal experience with racial profiling in America, but it's the Devil I know, so...

Oh, and that article I posted about the our "lion tricks in Iraq" clearly states...

>>>"Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, kept lions in his compound at the presidential palace, which was taken over by U.S. troops during the war. He was killed in a gun battle with American soldiers in July 2003."

Thrown to the Lions?

Gazzer writes:

>>>"You're the only one who uses his background under the mistaken assumption that it adds heft to an argument.

If you can jump to conclusions over something that basic, how will you get credibility on anything else?"

Nonsense. People on this blog often cite their profession, gender, ethnicity, religion, marital status, religion, military records, and academic achievement in an attempt to embellish or lend gravitas to their arguments. If you're saying I should not be granted that same courtesy, then it's probably a darned good thing I did it anyway, despite your objections.


--Cobra

Once more--This "War on Terror" is NOT restricted within the borders of Iraq.

It is the use of racial profiling within Iraq that is being discussed here.

Second, I will quote from Amnesty International about THEIR definition of "racial profiling.

So a bunch of do-nothing left-wing losers redefined "racial profiling" to mean "racial, ethnic, religious, and nationality-based profiling". I'm confused as to why you'd think I'd care.

Dan writes:

>>>"It is the use of racial profiling within Iraq that is being discussed here."

No, actually torture is being discussed here. Racial profiling was a tangent I introduced to show parallels between the "culture of torture" at home and abroad.

Dan writes:

>>>So a bunch of do-nothing left-wing losers redefined "racial profiling" to mean "racial, ethnic, religious, and nationality-based profiling". I'm confused as to why you'd think I'd care."

>>>Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty or AI) is an international, non-governmental organization with the stated purpose of promoting all the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international standards. In particular, Amnesty International campaigns to free all prisoners of conscience; to ensure fair and prompt trials for political prisoners; to abolish the death penalty, torture, and other treatment of prisoners it regards as cruel; to end political killings and forced disappearances; and to oppose all human rights abuses, whether by governments or by other groups."

LINK

They lead campaigns to free political prisoners, and fight against torture, to the extent that they've won the Nobel Peace Prize, something that "do-nothings" generally can't include on their resumes. But if you don't like their definition:

>>>"In the wake of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack the issue of "racial profiling" has become topical, as the urgency of preventing terrorists from boarding aircraft has again risen. If all Arabs were targeted to intense searches the day of the attacks, they would have had to devise other means to board the plane with the necessary equipment. Opponents of the practice of considering the race of terrorist suspects say that the gains made from targeting an ethnic group are hypothetically not outweighed by the feeling of insecurity that innocent members of that group are subjected to. Some point out that Al-Qaida is a religious, not ethnic terrorist organization and therefore racial profiling not only can cause false charging of innocent people, and can in theory also allow non-Arab Muslims who belong to Al-Qaida to get away with terrorism."

Link

I also hope that by your statement, you don't believe that being against torture brands one a "liberal", as there are plenty of conservatives, including those who have served in the military who are against it.

Veterans Against Torture

Veterans for Common Sense

Senator John McCain, Arizona (R)

--Cobra

Cobra:

Clearly I do have more faith in both pre- and post-PATRIOT Act American government than you do. You choose your "horror stories"; I look to the record so far, in which there appears to have been a whole lot of heat and not much light. See for instance this story - http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050311-103458-9020r.htm - from March of this year, which reports that of 1,943 PATRIOT Act-related complaints received by the Justice Dept. in 2004, "none accused department employees of misconduct because of the anti-terrorism law and only one unrelated case warranted a further criminal investigation," according to a Justice report by its Inspector General.

Or, as Ashcroft said in an interview with (sorry) Pat Robertson, "Well, it’s sort of furor-in-theory. There haven’t really been any people able to stand up and say, with any convincing authority, that the Patriot Act has been offensive. It fails what I call the “Name one” test. Well, (they say) ‘everyone’s being abused by this’ – well, name one person! Even in one appearance that I had before the Senate Judiciary Committee …Senator Feinstein from California said she had all these letters saying how terrible it was, but in the examination of the letters, none of the complaints was really related to the Patriot Act. And then she went to the ACLU and said, ‘Well, name one.’ The response to her from the ACLU at that particular time was we were not able to give you a particular case. You know, it’s been in effect for four years. And I think somewhere, if it was a really dangerous deal, you’d be able to ‘name one.’ It is important. We use the Act because we needed expanded authority." I'm almost sure this, or substantially similar comments, are from an interview my husband caught a few nights ago, but I'm darned if I can find a date on the website - http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/news/051117g.asp.

To state that the United States has a "culture of torture" is going to bring any meaningful discussion to a grinding halt... The officially unsanctioned and almost entirely unofficially unsupported acts of some bad actors on police forces are not comparable to government-sanctioned torture in Syria, and to suggest that they are only reveals that you appear determined to find the United States guilty regardless of arguments against your view.

I have GOT to get going... but the "lion tricks"? I repeat, what an inefficient way to torture. Two prisoners, and only two, have made this complaint, and it's still unconfirmed, over two years later. Sounds to me as if - stipulating the possibility that it happened at all, and it just figures that that psycho Uday would keep lions (I suspected as much, which is why I included that possibility) - it could not have been official policy, or there would be Army lion specialists, more than two complainants, some shred of confirmation, and presumably pictures, if Abu Ghraib is any indication. Isn't that what we're discussing - whether or not torture should be official American policy, and if so/not, how it should be defined?

I note that Cobra hasn't told us who it is acceptable to arrest.

We do know that we can't arrest anyone who might be innocent. We also can't arrest anyone from the terrorists' ethnic groups.

Perhaps he doesn't know that if it's impossible to get things done in a reasonable way, either those things won't happen or they'll be done an unreasonable way. Does Cobra want to bet on which of the latter is more likely?

No, actually torture is being discussed here. Racial profiling was a tangent I introduced to show parallels between the "culture of torture" at home and abroad

You introduced it because to you, everything's about race. You could find a racial angle in a person's preference for vanilla ice cream over chocolate.

But in any case, once it was introduced, we started discussing it... hence my remark.

Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty or AI) is an international, non-governmental organization with the stated purpose of [yadda yadda yadda]

I'm aware that they are self-proclaimed experts on human rights. Key phrase: self-proclaimed. But since they've done nothing to actually help improve the state of human rights around the world, and tend to use Orwellian redefinitions in order to classify perfectly acceptable activity as human rights violations, I see no reason to respect them or their opinions. They're the left-wing Moral Majority, nothing more.

Andy writes:

>>>"Perhaps he doesn't know that if it's impossible to get things done in a reasonable way, either those things won't happen or they'll be done an unreasonable way. Does Cobra want to bet on which of the latter is more likely?"

The fact is that thousands of people are being arrested, many secretly, without habeus corpus, and far too many subjected to torture.
Racial profiling is being used in many of these arrests. I've provided link after link to substantiate this.
Hate the message. Not the messenger.

Dan writes:

>>>"You introduced it because to you, everything's about race. You could find a racial angle in a person's preference for vanilla ice cream over chocolate."

Dan, you can eat rum-raisin with rainbow sprinkles on a sugar cone for all I care. This subject needs the injection of race and ethnicity because the history of this nation indicates that there are many Americans who will tolerate cruel, unjust and inhumane treatment to those NOT of their particular race or ethnicity. Including torture. If you need further evidence of this reality, I'll be happy to post MORE links, quotes and statistics for you.

Jamie,

My friend, we'll have to agree to disagree. Asking the Bush Administration to police itself is a truly sysiphean task. As far as our "culture of torture" goes, I don't have to go back to Americas checkered past, but just a glancing look at what occurs in our prisons today will tell you all you need to know.

--Cobra

This subject needs the injection of race and ethnicity because the history of this nation indicates that there are many Americans who will tolerate cruel, unjust and inhumane treatment to those NOT of their particular race or ethnicity. Including torture.

This nation has a history of tolerating the cruel, injust, and inhumane treatment of members of every racial group in the world, white people included. The skin color of Al Qaeda terrorists simply isn't relevanct. There is no significant number of people who support the torture of "dark" terrorists but not "white" ones. It's just that almost all the terrorists in the world are nonwhite, because almost all the socially backwards shitholes in the world that SPAWN terrorists are populated by people who aren't white. If Swedes took up terrorism, we'd take the blowtorch to their privates too.

Your problem, as always, is that you equate "bad things happened to a person with dark skin" with "bad things happened because that person had dark skin". You're seemingly incapable of believing that anyone has motivations beyond race.

Dan writes:

>>>"It's just that almost all the terrorists in the world are nonwhite, because almost all the socially backwards shitholes in the world that SPAWN terrorists are populated by people who aren't white."

This statement is a perfect example of WHY I bring race into this discussion. The MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base lists over 262 Terrorist Groups of European origin alone.

MIPT TERROISM KNOWLEDGE BASE

There are the famous names like the Irish Republican Army, November 17, and ETA as well as others less so. I don't even have to bring up home spun white terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, or Army of God, do I? I'm sure Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh aren't factoring into your opinions, hmm?

Dan writes:

>>>"Your problem, as always, is that you equate "bad things happened to a person with dark skin" with "bad things happened because that person had dark skin". You're seemingly incapable of believing that anyone has motivations beyond race."

Nope. I just don't rule the possibility, especially in light of facts and historical precedent that support my opinions more often than not.

--Cobra

Well done cobra,

You've succeeded in sabotaging what had been a fairly well defined topic over whether torture is ever justified.

Now you've used your blackness to goad everyone into talking about what you want to talk about. Are you like this at parties also?

I scanned through another thread the other day and saw you bringing your blackness into that too. I think we get your point: You're black, and blacks have been victimised.

Well I hope that others on this board realize that you do not speak for me or for millions of other proud black men like me.

On a more personal note, please go back and look at your prior posts and remember that you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I thibnk it's ok for me to tell you this, given that I'm, you know, black.

If the Klan became once again a factor in black people's lives, would it be ok for law enforcement to focus on white southern males primarily? Just asking.

I note that Cobra still hasn't told us what we can do to fight this war. We may stop, or we may change how we fight it. Anyone want to be how we'd change if an attack succeeded? If you won't like the likely changes, perhaps you ought to make sure that an attack doesn't happen.

As to the IRA and ETA, the US doesn't actually care. Maybe we should, but we don't.

I note that McVeigh is dead. Rudolph is in jail. The KKK is a marching organization. Aryan Nations doesn't even have a PTPPI any longer.

How many Swedish grandmothers do we have to round up to make Cobra happy?

Gazzer writes:

>>>"Well I hope that others on this board realize that you do not speak for me or for millions of other proud black men like me."

Isn't this an example of yourself using your "blackness?"

Gazzer, perhaps you could scroll through some of the previous threads on this blog, especially ones where posters deem blacks as intellectually inferior genetically and come back to me about the relevance in discussions. Furthermore, if you believed for a second torture would be even whimsically discussed if detainees resembled "Swedish grandmothers" (or their children) you need an intervention far more than I do.

As far as whom I speak for? I speak for myself, without shame, hesitation or intimidation.

Andy Freeman writes:

>>>"I note that McVeigh is dead. Rudolph is in jail. The KKK is a marching organization. Aryan Nations doesn't even have a PTPPI any longer."

McVeigh and Rudolph were responsible for more American civilian casualties than Saddam Hussein's Iraq regime.

--Cobra

So?

I note that Cobra still hasn't told us who we can arrest. It's unclear that we can arrest swedish grandmothers, but we definitely can't arrest anyone swarthy. Given that the latter is disproportionately involved in certain activities, his prohibition amounts to a free pass OR a requirement that we use "other methods". I wonder which one he thinks is more likely and whether he'd prefer arrests to "other methods".

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