Should “Harsh” Interrogations Be Banned?

Apparently not....Oh and don't don't make a fuss over the enemies methods either it might make them mad.

I'm waiting for the promise of "Transparency" to begin... maybe he has a timetable to start it that he doesn't want to release for "national security" purposes. ;~D

 Bush himself said we don't do torture--a meaning with a wide berth. In addition to thr View, I suggest all of Bush press conferences. 

Waterboarding is probably a torture, but I don't think it goes to the level of shocking the concience when you consider what the recipient of it did. I can comfortably say that I wasn't wringing my hands when I learned that the  911 mastermind had his head dunked in water a few times to loosen up his lips. Now, if they were chopping off his fingers and toes and hanging him upside down from a ceiling fan then I would say, wow, who oredered that and to what end.

And the liberal hypocrisy:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html

torture leaves you BROKEN and CRIPPLED. harsh interogation is rather uncomfortable, hurts too, but thats about it. And some frats do worse during their hazing period. My heart bleeds for those poor poor meraderous terrorists who are waterboarded or deprived of sleep [/sarcasm].

If alternatives existed, I would be for using them, but we already use the "alternative" torture methods, the ones that cause no permanent harm or undue stress. Simply STOPPING any real interrogation and asking the nice child merderes with a please and thank you is not gonna yield any results.

People, people\. It's still all Bush's fault.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=medieval+torture

Have you heard the leaks about the report of our offshore prisons obama comissioned? his own report meant to crucify bush found that despite bush's refusal to cowtow to foreign powers, the prisoners actually have conditions that are within or exceeding those specified in gevena, are excellently treated, and face great harm and brutal tortures should they be released (since they would just be arrested by the locals)

Dude, have you actually watched the View?  *shudder* 

~Zoo

You -do- know that waterboarding was prosecuted by the U.S Military during war crimes trials after WW2 don't you?

You -do- know that the origin for much of the "harsh interrogation" methods came from SERE (Survival, evasion, resistance and escape) a training program designed to prepare troops for the things the BAD GUYS would be doing to them if they got caught. Not only that, but by their own admission, the SERE instructors stressed that what they subjected service personnel to was a small sample under very controlled circumstances and even then there were risks. Where did the SERE programs get these techniques from?

And I quote:

"Government studies in the 1950s found that Chinese Communist interrogators had produced false confessions from captured American pilots not with some kind of sinister "brainwashing" but with crude tactics: shackling the Americans to force them to stand for hours, keeping them in cold cells, disrupting their sleep and limiting access to food and hygiene.

"The Communists do not look upon these assaults as ‘torture,’ " one 1956 study concluded. "But all of them produce great discomfort, and lead to serious disturbances of many bodily processes; there is no reason to differentiate them from any other form of torture."

Well, if it's good enough to make a downed American pilot sign a false confession, it's gotta be good enough to get solid intel on the 'terrists!

Oh wait, Al Qaida is still around today and they never did get the guy ultimately responsible for the attacks (instead deciding to spend a couple trillion and thousands of lives invading a country not in any way connected to 9/11!

On a final note-

The U.S did not need these tactics to fight and defeat the nazis. The U.S did not need these tactics to win the cold war.

So, you were able to face down two completely militarized regimes on two different areas of the globe, you were able to take down an empire that threatened complete nuclear annihilation, yet suddenly 19 guys with razor blades is a much bigger threat than anything else you've ever dealt with, and now, NOW, you need to use the very same tactics you once considered a war crime which was used against your own people (U.S service personnel) which only got them to sign false confessions?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30338039/

Good try, but I don't think they'll be convinced.  Blatant hypocrisy can be ignored because of TERRORISTS!

~Zoo

what the us did or did not consider when it suited their needs is ireelevent. in texas dildos are outlawed, (in 2004 the first arrest was made, cops were admonished, in 2007 second arrest was made, store clerk was convicted and is now a registerested sex offender, for selling dildos in an adult store to adults).

as I already pointed out: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=medieval+torture

Forcing someone to sign a "false confession" does not mean they lied to the interrogators, but that they cooperated with their interrogators. I would consider myself very lucky to be "tortured" in such a humane way that does not cause any permanent harm to my body. Heck i'd sing like a canery at the mere threat of being crippled. But I Could remain tight lipped indefinitely under pain, because pain is merely your body reporting damage to you. You should avoid the damage, but if you know it is a false report (no actual damage, or no lasting damage), than its no big deal. I have performed surgury on myself without anestesiac before.

Not having completely eliminated al quaeda does not mean that the techniques are ineffective.

Since when are terrorists guys with razor blades?

There is really no comparison between hitler's armies and a geurilla / terrorist enemy. they are completely and utterly different.

Hmm, you might not want to tell people that.

~Zoo

honesty is imporant

Well, and it depends whats at stake too, but i know myself, i am as tough as you can get but being crippled scares the shit out of me.

EDIT: Silly me, you meant keep it a secret so its not used against you... right? [end edit]

The problem i see is that there is one word in ENGLISH... "torture"... There is no distinction between destoying a person, or simply using pain and deprevation as an interrogation tool with care not to cause any permanent damage.

I personally KNOW victims of KGB torture, they are crippled, in horrible ways, you take one look and you can see the horrors that have been done to their body. the smash toes, the disfigured limbs, the scars. "kept awake for 36 hours"? i mean, i stayed awake longer than that due to school or video games. Terribly uncomfortable, cramps, dizziness, cold sweat, shaking, clouded thinking, pain, the works... but while it can be used as a tool for "torture" it is very different type of torture to the body breaking kind.

I would volunteer to be put through such tortures but I doubt anyone would care. Maybe if i was a senator.

Right on.

~Zoo

I have read a very interesting article by STRATFOR two weeks ago that was talking about the whole torture process, the morality involved and the utility it brings to intelligence gathering effort.

First of all, the hypothetic situation that: "Do you torture a man if you know he has the bomb that will come off in the next hour?" is a very, very, very restrint situation. If you do know that:

1) There is a bomb that will go off

2) The general area where it will explodes

3) Who knows about it

4) The time it will explode

You already won the intelligence war; your intelligence network worked perfectly. Torture will simply be a mean to quicken the inevitable. If you do have the time to deal with the guy, it's usually much more efficient to show the guy all that you know, and tell him that he will never leave his cell anyway.

But those kind of circumstances are not common. In the aftermath of 9/11, the USA Intelligence agencies panicked, because they were caught unaware. The general intelligence network had been on sleep duty since the end of the cold war, and weren't paying much attention to groups like Al-Qaeda. But when AQ striked, they realised that they had a new ennemy that they didn't understand. They didn't understand the motivations, their means nor their objective.

Everybody was afraid right after 9/11, and for good reasons. The lack of information about the ennemy and its capability (specially knowning that AQ was reknown for it's 1-2 attacks) forced USA and its allies to resort to... less than mighty means. Yes, torture. They needed to understand the workout of the islamic terrorist organisations, and they did. The counter-terrorism effort is now much, much, much more efficient at dealing against those organisations, because we understand them a lot more now.

But in the meanwhile, torture passed from an emergency measure to a regular routine. It has became common place for U.S. intelligence agencies to resort to these means to gather information. And we aren't talking about life-or-death intelligence, we are talking about basic intelligence gathering. There are much more efficient (both in term of the quality of the information, and the PR involved) ways of using prisoners when you are doing routine interrogation.

So, am I in favor of banning torture for our intelligence missions? No. Nor I am in favor of banning nuclear weapons. It's a tool that has its uses, both in the extreme measures and as a dissuasive when you get into "intensive" interrogation. You can use it as a treath. But same than nuclear weapons, it should not be the norm. It should be exceptional. In times of pure crisis or when time is the essence - but then again, if you know the points 1, 2, 3 and 4 of what I wrote up-there, you have a pretty good intel network, don't you think?

To torture effeciently, you need to know who knows.

Artisym seems to ignore the fact these interrogations did work.  They stopped a Sept. 11 style attack that was planned for L.A. 

Now just imagine for one second if this attack had became reality, guess who would be blaming Bush again for "not doing enough".

While I do know that the US's intelligence services managed to stop that attack, I am curious to know how you are certain that torture was involved in getting the proper intelligence.

If I remember right, they had managed to capture the mastermind behind 9/11 attack, and they got some more info out of him, right?

The left says that we can’t torture because we need to be the “moral” leaders in the world, which is funny considering they usually chastise people who talk about being moral.

Priceless high commentary...I wish I had said it.

"The U.S did not need these tactics to fight and defeat the nazis. The U.S did not need these tactics to win the cold war."

And we don't need an orange peeler to eat an apple.  Sheeesh.

Read all the comments before commenting...okay?

Quickly, we must round up a group of liberal musicians to sing out against this injustice!

At what point do you stop? The person you're torturing might be guilty, and torturing them might help save lives, but equally they might be innocent, and you're torturing an innocent person without any 'reward/payoff' as a result.

Lets say that approximately 30% of people living in one particular neighbourhood are criminals. You could lock up everyone in that neighbourhood, and as a result prevent a lot of crime. You'll also be unfairly punishing innocent people. Similarly if you lower the threshold for proving someone is a murderer you'll likely catch a lot more murderers, but also have a lot more innocent people caught up and wrongfully imprissoned for a crime they didn't commit.

With crime+punishment a balance must be struck between the need to prevent crime (and punish criminals), and the need to protect innocent people being wrongfully punished.

Thats really the difference. There are those of us who think this is a law enforcement issue and then there are those who think that this is war. If you think the act of 911 was merely a crime and not an act of war, then your argument is valid.

Read the  article.

KSM was captured, and would not talk, not at all.  After being waterboarded for a bit, he started talking.  His info helped stop those attacks.