Durbin's Comments About Detainees Treatment At Gitmo

[trippin bily]

Second, the fact that both the 2000 page military report AND the report that by an FBI agent both corroborrate that torture has taken place...

Do either of these reports use the word torture or is that your word?

I have also repeatedly said that people who get outraged over inappropriate analogies OVER the fact that people are being tortured have their priorities screwed up.

Again you use the word torture, is it your word or is it in the reports you keep stating?



Look on this forum. Many conservatives admit that torture is happening (many of them excuse it, but they don't deny it.) Both the Military reports and FBI have confirmed this.

Was torture your word or the word of the conservatives?

Have you read either of the reports kurto just out of curiosity?

Part of milatary training is stress tests. Sleep deprivation
was a major part of it. Extreme temps was another.I've seen troops stand at attention for hours. Then pass out.
Now if i took out the word "milatary" and put in the word "torture"....
That is the disagrreement kurto.
What you believe is torture and I believe is questioning.
On a side note... what methods can we use to gather information from the terrorists?
thats what these people are kurto. terrrorists.
Is it possible that a non terrorist has been locked up... yes.
I'm sure there have. We have also released some 150 people from Gitmo so we believe that not evryone is a terrorist.
When we are SURE we let them go.
We've made mistakes there too. Some we released have headed back to the battle field.

[adios]

You're wasting your time Billy, he doesn't have a clue as to what the FBI memo is or of any specific information in any military report. As far as torture is concerned, first we have to define the criteria and then see if it applies. He's not interested in any information that would contradict his world view.

[kurto]

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I and I believe others like me don't disagree that what Durbin said takes place. We just believe that turning up or down the airconditioner consists of torture.


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Read the Time Magazine article. You'll see how during these simple humane techniques, they had to send a prisoner to a doctor.

You can characterize it as turning up the AC... but you're just being purposely dense.

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The fact that Durbin read anything with the word "airconditioner" followed by "torture" is laughable.

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Honestly... you have no imagination.

[kurto]

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he doesn't have a clue

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Look up Irony. Has the FBI cc'd you on their reports yet? We all know now that nothing's true unless adios gets a copy of the reports.

[tytygoodnuts]

It is great to see Durbin stand up and point out that the way we are treating prisoners is dispicable.

[MMMMMM]

Here's another column abouut Gitmo, etc.--and with what I think is a "fair and balanced" take on the whole situation.

Washington Post

"Gitmo Grovel: Enough Already

The self-flagellation over reports of abuse at Guantanamo Bay has turned into a full-scale panic. There are calls for the United States, with all this worldwide publicity, to simply shut the place down.

A terrible idea. One does not run and hide simply because allegations have been made. If the charges are unverified, as they overwhelmingly are in this case, then they need to be challenged. The United States ought to say what it has and has not done, and not simply surrender to rumor.

Moreover, shutting down Guantanamo will solve nothing. We will capture more terrorists, and we will have to interrogate them, if not at Guantanamo then somewhere else. There will then be reports from that somewhere else that will precisely mirror the charges coming out of Guantanamo. What will we do then? Keep shutting down one detention center after another?

The self-flagellation has gone far enough. We know that al Qaeda operatives are trained to charge torture when they are in detention, and specifically to charge abuse of the Koran to inflame fellow prisoners on the inside and potential sympathizers on the outside.

In March the Navy inspector general reported that, out of about 24,000 interrogations at Guantanamo, there were seven confirmed cases of abuse, "all of which were relatively minor." In the eyes of history, compared to any other camp in any other war, this is an astonishingly small number. Two of the documented offenses involved "female interrogators who, on their own initiative, touched and spoke to detainees in a sexually suggestive manner." Not exactly the gulag.

The most inflammatory allegations have been not about people but about mishandling the Koran. What do we know here? The Pentagon reports (Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, May 26) -- all these breathless "scoops" come from the U.S. government's own investigations of itself -- that of 13 allegations of Koran abuse, five were substantiated, of which two were most likely accidental.

Let's understand what mishandling means. Under the rules the Pentagon later instituted at Guantanamo, proper handling of the Koran means using two hands and wearing gloves when touching it. Which means that if any guard held the Koran with one hand or had neglected to put on gloves, this would be considered mishandling.

On the scale of human crimes, where, say, 10 is the killing of 2,973 innocent people in one day and 0 is jaywalking, this ranks as perhaps a 0.01.

Moreover, what were the Korans doing there in the first place? The very possibility of mishandling Korans arose because we gave them to each prisoner. What kind of crazy tolerance is this? Is there any other country that would give a prisoner precisely the religious text that that prisoner and those affiliated with him invoke to justify the slaughter of innocents? If the prisoners had to have reading material, I would have given them the book "Portraits 9/11/01" -- vignettes of the lives of those massacred on Sept. 11.

Why this abjectness on our part? On the very day the braying mob in Pakistan demonstrated over the false Koran report in Newsweek, a suicide bomber blew up an Islamic shrine in Islamabad, destroying not just innocent men, women and children, but undoubtedly many Korans as well. Not a word of condemnation. No demonstrations.

Even greater hypocrisy is to be found here at home. Civil libertarians, who have been dogged in making sure that FBI-collected Guantanamo allegations are released to the world, seem exquisitely sensitive to mistreatment of the Koran. A rather selective scrupulousness. When an American puts a crucifix in a jar of urine and places it in a museum, civil libertarians rise immediately to defend it as free speech. And when someone makes a painting of the Virgin Mary, smears it with elephant dung and adorns it with porn, not only is that free speech, it is art -- deserving of taxpayer funding and an ACLU brief supporting the Brooklyn Museum when the mayor freezes its taxpayer subsidy.

Does the Koran deserve special respect? Of course it does. As do the Bibles destroyed by the religious police in Saudi Arabia and the Torahs blown up in various synagogues from Tunisia to Turkey.

Should the United States apologize? If there were mishandlings of the Koran, we should say so and express regret. And that should be in the context of our remarkably humane and tolerant treatment of the Guantanamo prisoners, and in the context of a global war on terrorism (for example, the campaign in Afghanistan) conducted with a discrimination and a concern for civilian safety rarely seen in the annals of warfare.

Then we should get over it, stop whimpering and start defending ourselves."

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, June 3, 2005; Page A23

[Triumph36]

Krauthammer makes a decent argument, and then he blows it at the end.

1: "Is there any other country that would give a prisoner precisely the religious text to... justify the slaughter of innocents?" Sure, isn't the Bible allowed in prisons around the world? This claim is pure rhetoric and a desperate pleading with the reader to bask in how good the United States is.

2: Civil libertarians are arguing points of law, not what their political beliefs are. I don't think they would have a problem with someone tearing up a Koran at a demonstration - that's protected by free speech. Krauthammer is setting up a nice strawman here by comparing two out-of-context events.

I really don't think a conservative's defense should be "Isn't this better than anything ever?" There has to be a better argument than that. And no, I don't think mishandling the Koran is a big deal.

[MMMMMM]

I agree that some of Krauthammer's arguments are a bit flawed or less than ideal. I do think his central theme is pretty much on target, though.

[kurto]

how is this fair and balanced? Its incorrect.

Let me start by saying, I don't think Gitmo needs to be shutdown. But they might need to kick out some of the people who are running the thing and have some monitoring.

But this isn't very credible:
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We know that al Qaeda operatives are trained to charge torture when they are in detention, and specifically to charge abuse of the Koran to inflame fellow prisoners on the inside and potential sympathizers on the outside.


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The military have investigated it. Numerous military personel have confirmed that torture has taken place. (and at other sites, they have already confirmed that prisoner were beaten to death.)

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Moreover, what were the Korans doing there in the first place? The very possibility of mishandling Korans arose because we gave them to each prisoner. What kind of crazy tolerance is this?

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Yes, it sure sounds crazy to allow people to have the book of their faith. That's just CRAZY. We allow regular prisoners to have books and we don't deny prisoners Bibles.

Also... people should stop comparing ourselves to other countries that may do worst. We like to pretend we're an example to the rest of the world. We shouldn't dismiss any potential wrongdoing that may be happening by saying other people do worse things.

[MMMMMM]

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how is this fair and balanced? Its incorrect.

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how is it incoorect? Specifics please.

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Let me start by saying, I don't think Gitmo needs to be shutdown. But they might need to kick out some of the people who are running the thing and have some monitoring.

But this isn't very credible:

"We know that al Qaeda operatives are trained to charge torture when they are in detention, and specifically to charge abuse of the Koran to inflame fellow prisoners on the inside and potential sympathizers on the outside."

The military have investigated it. Numerous military personel have confirmed that torture has taken place. (and at other sites, they have already confirmed that prisoner were beaten to death.)

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First, you need to define torture, as Adios has suggested, so such things can be talked about more precisely Second, the fact that some torture, or something somehow resembling torture, may be occurring somewhere, in no way refutes the statement that al-Qaeda operatives are trained to charge torture and Koran abuse. So how pray tell is that statement "incorrect"? Fact is you don't know it is incorrect and you've offered nothing to refute it.


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Krauthammer: "Moreover, what were the Korans doing there in the first place? The very possibility of mishandling Korans arose because we gave them to each prisoner. What kind of crazy tolerance is this?
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Kurto: Yes, it sure sounds crazy to allow people to have the book of their faith. That's just CRAZY. We allow regular prisoners to have books and we don't deny prisoners Bibles.

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The suicide hijackers followed the fanatical Islamic view that dying in jihad would lead them to Paradise (specifically in this case, by committing their horrific acts of mass murder against infidels and dying in the process, they would get into Paradise as martyrs). Their fanatical devotion to the religious text propelled them towards their evil deeds, BECAUSE IN THE KORAN IT SPECIFICALLY CALLS ON MUSLIMS TO SLAUGHTER INFIDELS, and because these fanatics took that message literally.

So no, I don't think they should have been provided Korans.

Why give them the book that will confirm in their minds that killing infidels is just, and God's will; and why give them a source of internal psychological strength. If we are seeking information from them to prevent future terrorist attacks, better to break them psychologically. They should have no Korans in my opinion. The only practical reason to give them Korans would be to pacify the outside Muslim world. But even better in my opinion would be to tell the outside Muslim world that the reason the detainees don't get Korans is because they used the Koran to justify attacking and killing non-Muslims.

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Also... people should stop comparing ourselves to other countries that may do worst. We like to pretend we're an example to the rest of the world. We shouldn't dismiss any potential wrongdoing that may be happening by saying other people do worse things.

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We should not stop such making comparisons. Agreed, we shouldn't dismiss any potential wrongdoing but we should keep it in perspective. Keeping things in perspective is THE WHOLE POINT of such comparisons. More such comparisons ought to be made because far too persons many seem to have lost all sense of perspective.