Why does Bush hate Amnesty?

[Colleen Thomas]

The torture is the one thing I can't really figure out. How does that further the White House agenda? What's in it for them? What sort of financial or political gain is behind the torture?

Since the time man first organized into a fighting force Military Intelligence has been of paramount importance. That intelligence covers an array of things, some of which you wouoldn't think were of import, but can swing a battle.

In just one example, Pearl Harbor was a victory of great magnitude for the Japanese, a victory predicated on superb intelligence of enemy dispositions and monumental blunders by the US. At Midway, the intelligence coup belonged to the US. and a numerically inferior force gained an astounding victory. One the was based on courage and luck, but predomiantly on a US. intelligence coup and Japanese intelligence failures.

In a war of insurgency, intelligence becomes even more vital, not only to forestall an enemy attack, but in this case, to determine exactly who is the enemy and who is just a poor slob trying to survive to see the sun rise tomorrow.

Insurgants

1. Don't regularly use radio: So signals intelligence is out.
2. Don't generally have an acknowledged chain of Command: So Historic intlligence is out.
3. Don't wear uniforms, conduct drills or otherwise show themselve to be the enemy: So most forms of spying are out.

The only real intelligence you can get is human intelligence. Barring well placed moles within the movement, you are pretty much hitting blind. Operating as either a reactionary force, or swinging a wide loop in what used to be called search and destroy operations, hoping to shake loose some of them.

Torture gains information. the veracity of that information is largely dependant on the resolve of the individual and the skill of the interrogator. In an insurgant conflict, it's almost a given that the larger power will resort to it eventually.

I'm not condoneing it, but if you wish to understand how it happens, you have to recognize the underlying factor. Hard data is immensly valuable and rare. If you are holding a man who knows the structure of at least his cell and he won't tell you, it's going to occur to someone to beat it out of him. If he is the only source of intelligence you have, the temptation is going to be that much greater.

I don't want to burst any bubbles, but the Japanese used torture regularly in WWII. As did the Germans. The Koreans in that conflict. The viecong in that one. Saddam in his wars. that seems not too hard to believe, but what may surprise you is we used it in those conflicts as well. So did the Brits, the Austrailians, even the French. When it comes to military necessity, the list of those people and countries who have put their scruples aside is practically endless.

 

[rgraham666]

The biggest problem with torture is whether it can provide you with useful answers or not.

In my opinion, generally it cannot. This is because torture is not used to find answers, but to confirm them. Most often the torturer already has the answer they want, they are now getting the victim to confirm that answer. The Inquisition is the Western archetype of this phenomena.

"The purpose of torture is to get answers." This was written on the walls of prisons of Pol Pot's Cambodia.

And let's face it, torture is not a military tool, but a political one. People in power of all stripes believe that if there are enough maimed individuals walking around and enough mass graves, the people they rule will be intimidated into submission.

Sadly, they're right.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Thoughtful and interesting posts, Colly and Box. Thanks for the interesting observations.

I'll add this on to the question of torture, and perhap even to the wider question of terrorism. Sometimes what starts as a necessity continues as a habit, vice, or predeliction. In reference to terrorism in its broad sense, there is some argument to be made for guerilla-style warfare and covert bombing attacks. I use that langauge rather than "terrorism" generally to distinguish between those who attack military targets and those who attack civilians. Whether one likes the moral or tactical implications from the position of superior power, when one is outnumbered, outgunned, and immensely technologically inferior, the strategy of covert bombing attacks and blend-in-with-the-populace guerilla warfare is bound to crop up, out of the same sort of exigencies and needs that Colly mentions in relation to torture. Need drives actions, and for some the ends will justify the means.

However, eventually the means can become the end. In any organization in which ruthless violence becomes an available tool, ruthless, violent people will eventually rise to control the organization. Whether their ambition and violence manifest as torture, bombing, sniping military targets, or attacking civilians, their tactics tend to weed out from their own organization people of character who resist the use of such tactics. Eventually, those with the will to use the most extreme means are the ones left in charge. The progression of the Irish Republican Army from its inception through to the modern Provisional IRA and its more extreme splinter factions is a good example of what happens when this sort of behavior continues for long periods of time. Eventually you end with people who simply enjoy violence, feed on hatred, and if not grouped under a flag or "cause" would probably be thugs and hit men for the local organized crime groups.

I think it behooves us to consider this in relation to our government's increasingly narrow interpretation of "torture" and increasingly broad perception of the scope of its legal and moral options in dealing with enemies abroad. It's not merely the question of what we do to others that should concern us; it's also the question of what we make of ourselves when we reward and promote cruelty and ruthlessness. I do believe that war is at times necessary, and that what is necessary must be weighed with what is morally pure. But we must always remember that our actions in those cases are not isolated and distant, applying only to our enemies. They have a way of becoming part of who we are.

Shanglan

 

[rgraham666]

Nicely said, Shang.

Beware when you battle monsters,
lest you become a monster.
And as you gaze into the abyss,
the abyss gazes also,
into you.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

. . . However, eventually the means can become the end.. . .

There is nothing so pregnant as cruelty

 

[Boxlicker101]

The biggest problem with torture is whether it can provide you with useful answers or not.

In my opinion, generally it cannot. This is because torture is not used to find answers, but to confirm them. Most often the torturer already has the answer they want, they are now getting the victim to confirm that answer. The Inquisition is the Western archetype of this phenomena.

"The purpose of torture is to get answers." This was written on the walls of prisons of Pol Pot's Cambodia.

And let's face it, torture is not a military tool, but a political one. People in power of all stripes believe that if there are enough maimed individuals walking around and enough mass graves, the people they rule will be intimidated into submission.

Sadly, they're right.

Generally speaking, interrogators ask some questions to which they already know the answers. That way, when the person being tortured lies, the torturer knows it and sends electricity through his genitals or applies the red hot branding iron or pours the boiling water or whatever else they are doing. The victim quickly learns that the way to avoid pain is to tell the truth. Usually, this just confirms what is already believed but sometimes it produces new info.

Torture can be a military tool if it is used to get info. When it was used by people like Hitler and Saddam and Ho and Stalin and others of that stripe, it was political, to terrorize possible rivals. When used against citizens of another country who have been captured, such as what is being discussed here, its purpose is military.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

The John McCain of Bagram Prison
Margaret Carlson

Torture is torture, in Vietnam or Afghanistan.

On Memorial Day, I watched the A&E movie about former Navy Lt. Cmdr. John McCain's 5½ years in a Vietnam prison. McCain's face was beaten to a bloody pulp, his bones shattered, his teeth knocked out. Guards hung him from the ceiling by his arms, one of which was broken. It was so painful I had to return repeatedly to my crossword puzzle.

The next morning, I watched President Bush at his news conference respond to a question about an Amnesty International report condemning U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, Guantanamo and elsewhere. Bush called charges of abuse "absurd" allegations by detainees "who hate America."

But how does he explain the Army? The New York Times recently obtained the Army's 2,000-page file on deaths at its Bagram, Afghanistan, detention center. It's as chilling to read as it is to watch McCain's crippled leg being crushed.

The John McCain of this report is an uneducated Afghan villager known as Dilawar, who was sent by his mother to pick up his sisters for a Muslim holiday on Dec. 5, 2002. Before he got there, Dilawar was rounded up as a suspect in a rocket attack.

For much of his five days in custody, Dilawar was brutalized and hung from the ceiling of his cell, even though no one thought he was a terrorist or had any useful information. Military police took turns kicking him above the knee because they found it amusing to hear him cry out "Allah."

When he was too weak to follow orders during interrogations, one sergeant grabbed him by his beard, crushed his bare foot with her boot and then reared back and kicked him in the groin.

That night, an interrogator summoned an MP when he noticed Dilawar's head slumped forward in his hood and his hands limp in his chains. After pressing his fingernail to see that blood was still circulating, the MP left him there. On Dec. 10, dragged in for what would be his last interrogation, Dilawar was incoherent. Angry at his unresponsiveness, an interrogator held him upright by twisting his hood around his neck. An intelligence specialist who spoke Dilawar's Pashto dialect was disturbed enough to notify the officer in charge. It was too late. Dilawar was already dead.

Were the Vietnamese guards who savagely beat McCain any worse?

Then-Lt. Gen. Daniel McNeill, U.S. commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, initially claimed that Dilawar wasn't abused and died of natural causes, according to the Times. The case was virtually closed until a March 4, 2003, article in the Times reported that an autopsy found Dilawar died from blunt force injuries that shattered his lower extremities.

The Army reopened the inquiry and, more than two years later, seven soldiers were found complicit in his death. McNeill, on the other hand, was promoted.

Shortly after Dilawar's death, Bagram's chief interrogator, Army Capt. Carolyn Wood, was deployed to Abu Ghraib.

The outrage that followed photos from Abu Ghraib has subsided. Only one of the five top officers at the prison — a reservist — was reprimanded. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who wrote a memo saying the Geneva Convention protections against torture don't always apply, was elevated to attorney general. Hearings by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) were quickly put on hold. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has called for them to restart, but so quietly it's as if he were calling on some other party in control of some other Senate to hold them.

I understand Graham's reluctance. I come from a military family, and I risk being called unpatriotic if I so much as criticize unarmored Humvees.

Bush maintains that only enemies of America would allege such abuse. But if the charges are true, it is the perpetrators and their superiors who show contempt for America and what it represents.

Watching the government stonewalling and lie about the fatal beating of an innocent man is as disturbing as watching the torture John McCain suffered 30 years ago rather than betray what America stands for.

 

[Boxlicker101]

There are some differences here. The torture of the American prisoners was the policy of the government of North Vietnam and the actual torturers remained anonymous. After the war ended they probably continued as occupiers of the conquered South Vietnamese.

In comparison to that, the Americans who did the evil deeds were identified and charged with serious crimes. Some are currently serving sentences in federal prisons and have been dishonorably discharged. Carolyn Woods and others will probably eventually join this disgraced group.

As for the higher ranking officers, either on site or in the pentagon, I don't believe they were all that involved.

I still have yet to hear or read much about the torture and murders committed by those that I call terrorists. Some of the worst are actually members of the Islamic clergy such as Al Sadr.

 

[LadyJeanne]

There are some differences here. The torture of the American prisoners was the policy of the government of North Vietnam and the actual torturers remained anonymous. After the war ended they probably continued as occupiers of the conquered South Vietnamese.

In comparison to that, the Americans who did the evil deeds were identified and charged with serious crimes. Some are currently serving sentences in federal prisons and have been dishonorably discharged. Carolyn Woods and others will probably eventually join this disgraced group.

As for the higher ranking officers, either on site or in the pentagon, I don't believe they were all that involved.

I still have yet to hear or read much about the torture and murders committed by those that I call terrorists. Some of the worst are actually members of the Islamic clergy such as Al Sadr.

The thing is, Box, I'm not convinced that torture is not the policy of our government and our Army. I find it hard to believe that, in an organization so wedded to chain-of-command, individual soldiers would take it upon themselves to torture prisoners just becasue the soldiers are 'bad apples'. I think the problem is more systemic than that, and I think because our government leaders and the White House aren't especially interested in investigating this more widely and deeply, we are just hearing part of the story - the one they'd like us to believe...the one that's easier for Americans to handle...it's just a few bad apples and we're taking care of it...

Maybe there's no 'smoking gun' memo out there somewhere saying yes, let's use torture to extract military intelligence from prisoners. But I'm guessing there are some 'look the other way' policies, maybe don't ask, don't tell, that is encouraging or allowing our interrogators to get out of control.

 

[Boxlicker101]

The thing is, Box, I'm not convinced that torture is not the policy of our government and our Army. I find it hard to believe that, in an organization so wedded to chain-of-command, individual soldiers would take it upon themselves to torture prisoners just becasue the soldiers are 'bad apples'. I think the problem is more systemic than that, and I think because our government leaders and the White House aren't especially interested in investigating this more widely and deeply, we are just hearing part of the story - the one they'd like us to believe...the one that's easier for Americans to handle...it's just a few bad apples and we're taking care of it...

Maybe there's no 'smoking gun' memo out there somewhere saying yes, let's use torture to extract military intelligence from prisoners. But I'm guessing there are some 'look the other way' policies, maybe don't ask, don't tell, that is encouraging or allowing our interrogators to get out of control.

I doubt if any of the higher ups actually order torture but they may say something like "Do whatever it takes" and the soldiers in the trenches decide this means torture. The AG farting through his mouth certainly doesn't help anything.

 

[thebullet]

Boxlicker, it's good to see a person who can hold on to his beliefs in the face of all evidence. Don't be persuaded by the truth. Stick to your guns no matter how assinine you sound.

Is this a great country, or what?

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

I doubt if any of the higher ups actually order torture . . .

In Canada and elsewhere, information about the Maher Arar case is still making news. I don’t believe many, if any, major American network has even carried it.

Maher Arar is a 34-year-old wireless technology consultant. Arar was born in Syria and at the age of 17, came to Canada with his family. He became a Canadian citizen in 1991 and in 1997 moved to Ottawa.

In September 2002, Arar was in Tunisia, vacationing with his wife Monia Mazigh and their two small children. On Sept. 26 while in transit in New York’s JFK airport, he was detained by US officials and interrogated about alleged links to al-Qaeda. Twelve days later, he was chained, shackled and flown to Jordan aboard a private plane and from there transferred to a Syrian prison.

In Syria, he was held in a tiny “grave-like” cell for ten months and ten days before he was moved to a better cell in a different prison. He was beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession.


MAHERARar.ca

The most recent piece of information to come out is the following.

Ottawa refused US appeal to jail Arar

"The Americans told the Canadian security services, we're prepared to give you back Mr. Arar, on condition you engage yourselves to arrest him and put him in prison and press charges," Mr. De Bané said.

Canadian authorities rejected the idea, he said.


"The Canadians said to the Americans, we have a Charter of Rights . . . we don't have cause to arrest and press charges and put him in jail," he said.

A number of the ordinary Canadians that I have spoken to fault their government for not accepting the deal, then reneging on it.

In retrospect, it seems a better compromise to imprison Arar in Canada without torture, than let the US use extreme rendition to send him to Syria and torture.

Yet, I can’t see how Canadian officials could justify imprisoning their own citizen on advice from a foreign power, without proof.

Alternately, I can’t see officials of two countries lying to each other during a prisoner exchange.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

The thing is, Box, I'm not convinced that torture is not the policy of our government and our Army. I find it hard to believe that, in an organization so wedded to chain-of-command, individual soldiers would take it upon themselves to torture prisoners just becasue the soldiers are 'bad apples'. I think the problem is more systemic than that, and I think because our government leaders and the White House aren't especially interested in investigating this more widely and deeply, we are just hearing part of the story - the one they'd like us to believe...the one that's easier for Americans to handle...it's just a few bad apples and we're taking care of it...

Maybe there's no 'smoking gun' memo out there somewhere saying yes, let's use torture to extract military intelligence from prisoners. But I'm guessing there are some 'look the other way' policies, maybe don't ask, don't tell, that is encouraging or allowing our interrogators to get out of control.

neither the army, nor the Marines, have torture as an avialable tool. Interrogator is not an MOS. One reason we have a Military police force and enemy combatants are not detained by line soldiers is to prevent abuses.

IN WWII, my grandfather's ship was used to ferry some prisoners from Okinowa to Tinian. My grandfather, as well as the rest of the repel boarder's party (the ship had no marine compliment) were ordered out, issued guns and bowie kinves and removed from their normal watches. They weren't charged with seeng that the prisoners didn't escape. They were charged with making sure their fellow sailors didn't kill them.

War is a nasty, stressful affair and line troops, in general, develope a hatred of the enemy that can only come with seeing your buddies killed and maimed. They make terrible jailors and the military has long recognized this.

While you can argue that there are endemic, doctrinal faults that might lead to abuses, it's slanderous to state you don't know for sure the military dosen't have a policy against torture of prisoners. More than anyone else, those in the military are likely to be scrupulous in the treatment of prisoners, as they know some of their men may be captured. When the people you are fighting have already shown they enjoy decapitating prisoners, that prohibition may be lessened to a great extent.


Ona different note:

Rg said:

The biggest problem with torture is whether it can provide you with useful answers or not.

It can. It often does. One reason I can accept that the abuses at Abu Grahib were not planned or sanctioned is because they were so amatuerish. Torture has gone high tech, with psychology and phisiology courses being more inportant than brute strength and a sadistic streak.

The most effective method of interrogation is sleep deprivation. If you can think back to how fuzzy and off you are after a day without sleep, imagine it carried out to 72 hours or more. It tends to divorce a person from thier higher cognitive functions and that makes them less likely to hold back information that would be detrimental to their cause as the cause itself becomes divorced from the information.

Attaching electrodes to someone's testicles is school yard. The, you are gonna tell me or I'm going to hurt you brand of interrogation that, seldom works. Someone in pain will generally say whatever it takes to get out of it. Information gained in this manner is rarely useful. The very nature of the abuses, the lack of sophistication and th lack of situational control speak against this being coordinated by experts. And that speaks against there being an official, if unstated policy of torture. If you are going to do it, and do it on the sly, you aren't going to entrust it to amatuers. You will pick and train a highly specialized cadre and they will work alone, separated at all times from line units where you cannot count on discresion.

 

[thebullet]

At the least it is undoubtedly true that the administration knew that the torture was happening and refused to do anything about it. This goes all the way to the top. The International Red Cross has been asking the Bush administration to end the torture for at least three years. The IRC has been documenting the abuse from the very beginning.

More and more information is accumulating that the administration encouraged or more probably instigated the torture. There are thousands of documents that have been released through the Freedom of Information Act that illustrate the intricate web of deception that is going on.

For those who care, here is a link to the ACLU website with original documents obtained throught the Freedom of Info Act:torture documentation

 

[Colleen Thomas]

At the least it is undoubtedly true that the administration knew that the torture was happening and refused to do anything about it. This goes all the way to the top. The International Red Cross has been asking the Bush administration to end the torture for at least three years. The IRC has been documenting the abuse from the very beginning.

More and more information is accumulating that the administration encouraged or more probably instigated the torture. There are thousands of documents that have been released through the Freedom of Information Act that illustrate the intricate web of deception that is going on.

For those who care, here is a link to the ACLU website with original documents obtained throught the Freedom of Info Act:torture documentation

There is a good deal of evidence FDR knew Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. The vast majority of it is based, at some point, on conjecture that he would not have been denied specific information. Time has proven that in many cases, he was.

If you are going to claim GWB, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, knew in the specific people were being tortured, then you are making an extraordinary claim. When you make such a claim, you have to provide rock solid evidence or at least compelling evidence.

This war was not a popular action outside of the US. I have seen multiple claims that have, as far a I can see, little substance. They are much like the cliams of German barbarity issued by the British government in WWI. Political propaganda for all intents and purposes. Multiple claims of abuse by British troops, in British Newspapers and by British politicians have proven to have been hoaxes.

In this climate, I think it is very easy for people to dismiss claims as anti-war propaganda. Despite the opinion of many, the people in this administartion are human. If you allow them human frailty, it's well within the realm of probability that they treated claims of abuse in much the same way I treated the claims of calamity fom the use of DU rounds. Emphatic claims, backed with shoddy or non existant facts, far more bluster than substance. You must couple this with a reality of war. In the heat of battle, there will be some abuses. Men under stress, in fear of their lives, may well take actions they would never contemplate otherwise.

this isn't to excuse the abuses. Nor is it to state emphatically no one higher up did know. It is simply to say, you cannot state emphatically they did, without some proof that they did. You cannot assume the thought paterns of a person.

As an example I dismiss claims by some groups out of hand, without bothering to check their facts. I have on enough occasions to convince myself they are full of shit. So I could well be given a report by Group X. I could even read it. But you would be wrong, to say I knew the truth about what the report contained at a later date, as I would have dismissed it out of hand and not even thought about it again much less done the investigative work needed to substantiate it.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Interesting points, Colly, on the difference between the existence of evidence and the acceptance and internalization of that evidence. Good points that remind us that finding documents, while very useful, is not the end goal and Holy Grail of establishing what happened and why.

I will also add a word for context. We've often heard claims that FDR knew Pearl Harbor would be bombed, as we have also heard that Bush knew, or should have known, that the twin towers would be attacked or that Bin Laden should be pursued immediately. However, I don't think it enough to have a document - even a very urgent and clearly-worded one - that says "Dear Mr. President, Bin Laden will hit the World Trade Center with airplanes on September 11th, 2001." One of the other things that one would need to know would be the size of the mountain of other claims and warnings - true and false - that that document was buried in. Was it the only intelligence advisory that week? The fifth that day? The fifteenth that hour? How many of them were accurate? How reliable were the sources generally considered? What would it have taken to have acted immediately on them all? To hold up a single document as proof positive that someone could have "known" - in the sense of being certain of the truth of the claim - that something was going to happen is, I think, inherently limited in its validity.

That said, this is also the reason why great crimes of state are becoming more and more difficult to punish or even prove. Hitler was mad and vicious, but did actually seem to accept that what was over was over. Milosevic, on the other hand, has learned from more recent political approaches; it's never over while you can still debate the meaning of the word "is." At the most basic level, it's really quite difficult to prove that someone in command is responsible for an atrocity. It's possible to learn a great deal about who physically shot someone; the forensic evidence is everywhere. But when establishing who ordered that person shot, there's nothing to find but spoken words or possibly a few memos, which anyone with the most basic of common sense will destroy immediately. A lack of evidence is a very serious problem in a criminal case, which cannot be proved without evidence. However, we should not confuse what can be proven with what happened. A lack of evidence does not mean that no crime occurred; it only means that it will be very difficult or impossible to prove to a legal standard of evidence. I think this a very serious problem facing the world, and one with no easy answer. How do we proceed when dealing with people whose crimes, if committed, would create little or no evidence, and who were, at the time of the alleged crime, in a position of such absolute power that any remaining evidence would be immediately destroyed? Even eyewitnesses are only laying their unsupported words against someone else's, and witnesses to the physical crimes are unlikely to be aware of what higher authorities ordered them.

I do believe Colly right in saying that one must be very careful in making accusations without evidence when the accusations are of such a grave nature. However, I do also worry about the traditional association of smoke and fire. Too, I am very concerned by the precedent set by arrangements like Guantanamo. While I agree that there is no evidence suggesting that our elected officials and cabinet have directly ordered the torture or mistreatment of prisoners, I think it inherently dangerous to create classes of people with no rights either as criminals or as enemy soldiers. I recognize that we have not in the past faced an enemy like the one we face now, but I think it unlikely that one can remove all civil and legal rights from a group of people without affecting the way in which their captors perceive those people and themselves. I believe that there is a fundamental message being sent when people are detained without rule, let, hinderance, rights, or charge, and I think it very likely that this does have something to do with the abuses in detainee centers. When you add that to very dubious (and indeed illegal) practices like "renditions," it suggests an organizational culture in which laws, rules, and rights are treated as annoyances that can and should be circumvented when convenient. Once that general attitude and approach permeates an institution, it's bound to be generalized up and applied down to a wide variety of circumstances. In each case, it will be an individual's decision - but one rooted in the "rules of the game" as s/he understands them, rules that are communicated from above.

Shanglan

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Interesting points, Colly, on the difference between the existence of evidence and the acceptance and internalization of that evidence. Good points that remind us that finding documents, while very useful, is not the end goal and Holy Grail of establishing what happened and why.

I will also add a word for context. We've often heard claims that FDR knew Pearl Harbor would be bombed, as we have also heard that Bush knew, or should have known, that the twin towers would be attacked or that Bin Laden should be pursued immediately. However, I don't think it enough to have a document - even a very urgent and clearly-worded one - that says "Dear Mr. President, Bin Laden will hit the World Trade Center with airplanes on September 11th, 2001." One of the other things that one would need to know would be the size of the mountain of other claims and warnings - true and false - that that document was buried in. Was it the only intelligence advisory that week? The fifth that day? The fifteenth that hour? How many of them were accurate? How reliable were the sources generally considered? What would it have taken to have acted immediately on them all? To hold up a single document as proof positive that someone could have "known" - in the sense of being certain of the truth of the claim - that something was going to happen is, I think, inherently limited in its validity.

That said, this is also the reason why great crimes of state are becoming more and more difficult to punish or even prove. Hitler was mad and vicious, but did actually seem to accept that what was over was over. Milosevic, on the other hand, has learned from more recent political approaches; it's never over while you can still debate the meaning of the word "is." At the most basic level, it's really quite difficult to prove that someone in command is responsible for an atrocity. It's possible to learn a great deal about who physically shot someone; the forensic evidence is everywhere. But when establishing who ordered that person shot, there's nothing to find but spoken words or possibly a few memos, which anyone with the most basic of common sense will destroy immediately. A lack of evidence is a very serious problem in a criminal case, which cannot be proved without evidence. However, we should not confuse what can be proven with what happened. A lack of evidence does not mean that no crime occurred; it only means that it will be very difficult or impossible to prove to a legal standard of evidence. I think this a very serious problem facing the world, and one with no easy answer. How do we proceed when dealing with people whose crimes, if committed, would create little or no evidence, and who were, at the time of the alleged crime, in a position of such absolute power that any remaining evidence would be immediately destroyed? Even eyewitnesses are only laying their unsupported words against someone else's, and witnesses to the physical crimes are unlikely to be aware of what higher authorities ordered them.

I do believe Colly right in saying that one must be very careful in making accusations without evidence when the accusations are of such a grave nature. However, I do also worry about the traditional association of smoke and fire. Too, I am very concerned by the precedent set by arrangements like Guantanamo. While I agree that there is no evidence suggesting that our elected officials and cabinet have directly ordered the torture or mistreatment of prisoners, I think it inherently dangerous to create classes of people with no rights either as criminals or as enemy soldiers. I recognize that we have not in the past faced an enemy like the one we face now, but I think it unlikely that one can remove all civil and legal rights from a group of people without affecting the way in which their captors perceive those people and themselves. I believe that there is a fundamental message being sent when people are detained without rule, let, hinderance, rights, or charge, and I think it very likely that this does have something to do with the abuses in detainee centers. When you add that to very dubious (and indeed illegal) practices like "renditions," it suggests an organizational culture in which laws, rules, and rights are treated as annoyances that can and should be circumvented when convenient. Once that general attitude and approach permeates an institution, it's bound to be generalized up and applied down to a wide variety of circumstances. In each case, it will be an individual's decision - but one rooted in the "rules of the game" as s/he understands them, rules that are communicated from above.

Shanglan

Gitmo is a convienient technicality. I don't suspaect you will see it disused or outlawed by treaty. It has proven to be expedient and neither the GOP nor the Dems have a good record of doing away with what is expedient. POW's have certain rights by international convention. Criminals enjoy a plethora of them, not only by international convention, but by our own domestic laws. the detainees at Gitmo enjoy no status and thus no rights. Frankly, I don't want them tried in US courts. I don't want to extend the rights of US citizens to them. I don't ever want the precedent set that terrorists can enjoy the full protections of this country when they have been merrily killing americans and trying to destroy the system of freedoms we enjoy.

It is in Gitmo, far more than Abu Grahib, where I think a case can be made against the administration. They may or may not have known about abuses, but they have set the conditions in which abuses can go unreported or under reported. When they decided to set it up, they had a responsibility to throughly condiser the implications and safe guard the rights of those detained, for while I detest terrorists, you can't legitimately believe everyone detained is guilty, if they were they would have tried at least some, if only by military truibunal.

In a legal sense, the weight of evidence here is that the administration is if not guilty of actually ordering torture, they are guilty of negligence in allowing conditions to exist where it might have happened.

I think that is the most solid accusation one can make and even itleaves a lot to be desired. As you said, proving just who came up with, approved, implemented, oversaw the arrangements is problematic at best.

It's a quandry. One I am not sure an answer exists to.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Gitmo is a convienient technicality. I don't suspaect you will see it disused or outlawed by treaty. It has proven to be expedient and neither the GOP nor the Dems have a good record of doing away with what is expedient. POW's have certain rights by international convention. Criminals enjoy a plethora of them, not only by international convention, but by our own domestic laws. the detainees at Gitmo enjoy no status and thus no rights. Frankly, I don't want them tried in US courts. I don't want to extend the rights of US citizens to them. I don't ever want the precedent set that terrorists can enjoy the full protections of this country when they have been merrily killing americans and trying to destroy the system of freedoms we enjoy.

Agreed. Gitmo is too useful to the administration for them to rid themselves of it now. I also agree that I don't actually like the idea of extending the full rights of US citizens to people who are not citizens and who have declared themselves our enemies. I think the better answer would be either to treat them as enemy soldiers in the absence of any other guidelines, or to draft a declaration of rights for "enemy combatants." Leaving them in a no-rights limbo has, as you observe, opened the door to a wide variety of abuses.

I think that this is also a good examplar for the need to weight moral and ethical ramifications before acting. Once we've done something and found it useful, cheap, or expedient, humans don't have much of a track record of then deciding to stop doing it. I found myself thinking of this when reading the assertion (re: stem cell research) that "abstract moral concerns must not be allowed to stand in the way of scientific progress." The difficulty with that assertion is that morality is unlikely to get a word in edgewise once the scientific breakthrough is presented fait accompli.

It is in Gitmo, far more than Abu Grahib, where I think a case can be made against the administration. They may or may not have known about abuses, but they have set the conditions in which abuses can go unreported or under reported. When they decided to set it up, they had a responsibility to throughly condiser the implications and safe guard the rights of those detained, for while I detest terrorists, you can't legitimately believe everyone detained is guilty, if they were they would have tried at least some, if only by military truibunal.

In a legal sense, the weight of evidence here is that the administration is if not guilty of actually ordering torture, they are guilty of negligence in allowing conditions to exist where it might have happened.

I think that is the most solid accusation one can make and even itleaves a lot to be desired. As you said, proving just who came up with, approved, implemented, oversaw the arrangements is problematic at best.

It's a quandry. One I am not sure an answer exists to.

Agreed. It's deeply frustrating. It's also, I would suggest, a very good reason to prosecute zealously those who create the negligence-fostering situations. At the very least, they encourage and shelter individual corruption; at the worst, they enact a dangerous and illegal agenda while leaving subordinates holding the evidentiary bag.

Shanglan

 

[sweetnpetite]

Naturally removable parts are not considered cannibalism worthy tissue, afaik. Like sperm. "Yeah baby, be a good little cannibal and swallow my load." would be kind of a turn-off for me.

kissing would be cannabalism too (swallowing each others saliva)- not that I don't think it *is* symbolically...

why is 'be a good little cannibal' bad while 'eat my pussy' could be a turn-on?

just curiously off topic...

 

[rgraham666]

My final word.

We've spent centuries trying to get rid of torture. We had done a good job of it. Now we're letting it out of the bottle again. It won't be easy to put it back.

I don't believe that the administration ordered torture to be used. Their unwillingness to condemn, investigate and prosecute it shows, to my mind, that torture is a tool they are at least willing to condone though.

But torture is generally a tool of tyrants. I thought we had fought long and bitterly to rid ourselves of tyrants.

Shrugs. Plus ca change and all that.

 

[cantdog]

Torture is entirely repugnant.

Colly's persuasive arguments largely amount to the notion that some of it has always gone on, particularly in the field, by battle-line troops. Vietnam showed a lot of that to us, back home. And many of us had torturers in the family, suddenly, to struggle with. They didn't find it pleasant, either, or easy to live with. Those arguments do not make it any less repugnant.

Despite a consistent pattern of logistical implementation of torture, which is what rendition amounts to, many people continue to allow only the 'few bad apples/heat of war' scenario. Neither the few bad apples nor the heat of war can explain the airplanes shipping people to foreign torture facilities. That sort of thing must be done by people with fleets of airplanes at their disposal, and the ability to select prisoners from the herd for such treatment, assign guards, make diplomatic arrangements with the recipient countries. Think about it. Consider, for one example, the Arar case VB put before us. Not the sort of thing a few unsupervised bad apples can accomplish, in my humble opinion. Not the sort of thing explicable by some shmoe in the war zone who saw his friends die. These guys with the diplomatic arrangements and the airplane transport are not, repeat not, the same fellows in the war zone in Afghanistan or iraq. These are bureaucrats, executing their orders. And those orders are repugnant in the extreme. Arar was never anyone at all, let alone al-Qaeda. And even if he were, it's still repugnant.

Political support for Republicanism is no excuse for turning a blind eye to torture as a policy or as an incident. Box says the ones responsible are being prosecuted. Who ? The Lynndie Englands or the people doing the renditions? Republicans, though, do not have to shoulder the stigma alone. The Kerry campaign never once came out against torture, never questioned the policy or the possibility of such a policy in debates, never took any stand but that once Garcia and England and four or five others were scapegoated all would be well. Their campaign replied to questions with a pure 'bad apples' answer. So the Democratic presidential candidate was happy to bury the issue, as well. There is unanimity across the Aisle. Repugnant unanimity. Support for diverting attention from torture, unquestionably, since 'bad apples' does not cover it. And a willingness to cover up and hide torture is a willingness to torture, since this is all torturers need, just a little impunity. Nationalistic fervor will do the rest.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Thanks, Cant and Rob. You both said it better than I.

This is not an issue I can compromise on and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Thanks, Cant and Rob. You both said it better than I.

This is not an issue I can compromise on and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one.

You made a statement that you didn't understand torture. I gave you one explanation, certainly not the only one, but a serviceable one. I wasn't trying to make it sexy or package it in a less awful way. I did not give it that cliche of cliche definitions of a neccessary evil. Nor did I at any point give the practice aprobation.

I wasn't asking you to compromise your principals on the matter. Nor did I strive to persuade you that your stance was wrong. If I gave the impression of trying to persuade, rather than inform, I apologize.

I did take exception to your statement that you weren't certain the Army didn't have a policy of Torture. I did not live through Vietnam, but I have studied it closely and talked with many who did. Outrage at political policy spilled over onto the troops in the field. No matter what your disgust, when you make blanket statements of an accusatory nature, you are taking in a lot of ground. You are, IMHO, perilously close to blaming the men in the field for political policy you don't like.

For my rebuttal to that statement, I will not apologize.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

. . . You are, IMHO, perilously close to blaming the men in the field for political policy you don't like. . . .

Men (and women) in the field are already taking the blame and the punishment for political policy.

It is time to spread a bit of that blame and punishment up the food chain, to reach the well insulated policy-makers.

Sitting back and claiming it is caused by heat-of-the-moment battle conditions, or bad apples, will never get the job done.

And the job DOES need doing.

 

[rgraham666]

I understand your point, Colleen. As I said, I don't believe torture is ordered from above, from either in either the military chain of command or from the executive office.

But neither is there a concerted effort to stop it. They'll act to mollify the public if the outcry gets too bad, but they think torture is useful enough to not make too big a fuss. Plus there's the whole 'being weak' thing to consider as well.

I also question whether they are getting useful information. It's been what, almost four years now? How many people have been charged or tried on information gained from torture? There might be secrecy involved, but surely they must have something. Considering this administration's penchant for crowing media, I can;t believe they wouldn't brag if they had accomplished something.

My biggest worry is what limits they'll set on the removal of rights and who they will use torture against next. Will the drunk put his bottle down once he's opened it?