Bush Administration wants an exception for CIA to commit torture

[Patroklos]

funny, police have been very effective at getting confessions without using torture or other questionable tactics. How do you explain that?

funny, since the exact opposite has proven true as well

In fact I bet we have gotten as much if not more bull**** from soft interrogations. But probobly less when they know it is a possibility they will come back to get the truth by other means when the lie is discovered.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

So no, I don't think that the people who do it for a living have a better idea of the effects.

I figured as much, which is why I don't really take your opinions on this subject seriously.

Because those who continue to do torture, even though it's been shown the answers are what the interrogator wants rather than what is the truth really care so much for the effects of what they are doing.

Frankly, I think a lot of it is also Abu Ghraib style power plays and vengence. Ie, see what I can do to these ****ers. Lets cover them in fake menstrual blood. Lets put them in stress positions all day. Let's humiliate the ****ers.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Patroklos


>BEGIN<

*Hands prisoner donut

Interrigator: "You want to talk?"

Prisoner: "No."

*Takes away donut

Interrigator: "How about now."

Prisoner: "No."

>END<

Though I suppose that is torture under the law, he might have really wanted a donut.

What an insightful, illustrative example to back up your flawed argument.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
My POV was stated here: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=139458

oh

[Drake Tungsten]

Frankly, I think a lot of it is also Abu Ghraib style power plays and vengence. Ie, see what I can do to these ****ers. Lets cover them in fake menstrual blood.

The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisonerfs reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldnft wash.

Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a manfs wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean.

gThe concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength,h says the draft, stamped gSecret.h

The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes.

Yep, sounds like vengeance to me.

[Patroklos]

For those of you who know anything about McCain, Stockdale and their fellow Vietnam POWs, did they spout more BS while being tortured or in the soft sessions?

[Ramo]

There was a great article by Jane Mayer several months ago principally about extraordinary rendition, but had some good stuff wrt the efficiency of torture. For instance:

For ten years, Coleman worked closely with the C.I.A. on counter-terrorism cases, including the Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania. His methodical style of detective work, in which interrogations were aimed at forging relationships with detainees, became unfashionable after September 11th, in part because the government was intent on extracting information as quickly as possible, in order to prevent future attacks. Yet the more patient approach used by Coleman and other agents had yielded major successes. In the Embassy-bombings case, they helped convict four Al Qaeda operatives on three hundred and two criminal counts; all four men pleaded guilty to serious terrorism charges. The confessions the F.B.I. agents elicited, and the trial itself, which ended in May, 2001, created an invaluable public record about Al Qaeda, including details about its funding mechanisms, its internal structure, and its intention to obtain weapons of mass destruction. (The political leadership in Washington, unfortunately, did not pay sufficient attention.)

Coleman is a political nonpartisan with a law-and-order mentality. His eldest son is a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan. Yet Coleman was troubled by the Bush Administration’s New Paradigm. Torture, he said, “has become bureaucratized.” Bad as the policy of rendition was before September 11th, Coleman said, “afterward, it really went out of control.” He explained, “Now, instead of just sending people to third countries, we’re holding them ourselves. We’re taking people, and keeping them in our own custody in third countries. That’s an enormous problem.” Egypt, he pointed out, at least had an established legal system, however harsh. “There was a process there,” Coleman said. “But what’s our process? We have no method over there other than our laws—and we’ve decided to ignore them. What are we now, the Huns? If you don’t talk to us, we’ll kill you?”

[...]

Coleman was angry that lawyers in Washington were redefining the parameters of counter-terrorism interrogations. “Have any of these guys ever tried to talk to someone who’s been deprived of his clothes?” he asked. “He’s going to be ashamed, and humiliated, and cold. He’ll tell you anything you want to hear to get his clothes back. There’s no value in it.”Coleman said that he had learned to treat even the most despicable suspects as if there were “a personal relationship, even if you can’t stand them.” He said that many of the suspects he had interrogated expected to be tortured, and were stunned to learn that they had rights under the American system. Due process made detainees more compliant, not less, Coleman said. He had also found that a defendant’s right to legal counsel was beneficial not only to suspects but also to law-enforcement officers.Defense lawyers frequently persuaded detainees to cooperate with prosecutors, in exchange for plea agreements. “The lawyers show these guys there’s a way out,” Coleman said. “It’s human nature. People don’t cooperate with you unless they have some reason to.” He added, “Brutalization doesn’t work. We know that. Besides, you lose your soul.”

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Patroklos

funny, since the exact opposite has proven true as well

So police do not get to the bottom of cases without using torture? All these years we've been lied to!

[Gatekeeper]

Top-notch article you posted, Ramo.

Furthermore, the question of torture isn't so much about the act itself (at least in my book), but what it means to be American. We pride ourselves on our Constitution, transparent government, freedoms, legal systems, lifestyles and whatnot. I'll be damned if I'll stand idly by while some of my countrymen and women decide to take the "easy way out" and condone torture in the name of acquiring information (which may or may not be accurate). Good grief. That just gives the terrorists another card to use against us when it comes to recruiting and whatnot.

IOW, I'm not willing to sacrifice what it is I hold dear. The loss of what makes us a great nation is simply a price too high to pay. God, it's already crumbling around the edges and cracks are spreading further inward! No more, DAMNIT.

Gatekeeper

[Patroklos]

It’s human nature. People don’t cooperate with you unless they have some reason to

So in other words, if they didn't think the alternative was torture, they would say nothing.

So police do not get to the bottom of cases without using torture? All these years we've been lied to!

Is your reading doohicky broken?

[Ramo]

So in other words, if they didn't think the alternative was torture, they would say nothing.

Is your reading doohicky broken?

Once again:

“Have any of these guys ever tried to talk to someone who’s been deprived of his clothes?” he asked. “He’s going to be ashamed, and humiliated, and cold. He’ll tell you anything you want to hear to get his clothes back. There’s no value in it.”Coleman said that he had learned to treat even the most despicable suspects as if there were “a personal relationship, even if you can’t stand them.” He said that many of the suspects he had interrogated expected to be tortured, and were stunned to learn that they had rights under the American system. Due process made detainees more compliant, not less, Coleman said.

[MrFun]

Ramo, let's not have facts get in the way of Pattycake's love affair with torture.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'll be damned if I'll stand idly by while some of my countrymen and women decide to take the "easy way out" and condone torture in the name of acquiring information (which may or may not be accurate).

Who's condoning torture? I haven't seen a single person do so on this thread, which makes your outraged stand seem a little silly...

[Kuciwalker]

Drake is right in part, but I don't think the information gleaned from such methods is anywhere near worth the damage to our public image from arguing over what counts as torture.

[Atahualpa]

Don't you love the smell of burnt witches in the morning?