Is Torture Justified?

[jimdmcevoy]

[ QUOTE ]

The tactics that I read in this article seem like a great way to cause serious discomfort to the detainees without causing them any real harm


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Neither I nor you have any idea exactly how much mental pain and anguish this has caused the prisoner.

So you are saying the rule is, mental pain ok, physical pain a no-no?

Who knows, maybe this guy would have prefered that his arm was ripped off.

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]
I cant believe some of you are comparing a woman in a mini skirt to what thousands of American POWs experienced in Vietnam. Criminal interrogators deprive detainees of sleep all the time in order to break them and they are working within the law, that could be considered torture by some. The tactics that I read in this article seem like a great way to cause serious discomfort to the detainees without causing them any real harm. When the US starts throwing these detainees in a sack with a bunch of angry rats and starts beating the sack, then there will be a serious issue to debate

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, we should wait until it gets worse to debate this. For now, the punching, kicking, electrocutions, humiliations, and depravations should continue.

Always great to have regimes such as the Nazis and the Viet Cong to cast a favorable light on your own misdeeds.

"Osama bin Laden is no big deal. Pol Pot killed millions, as did Stalin. Lets wait until OBL kills MILLIONS, then we can talk about how bad a guy he is"

[chabibi]

i didnt make the rules i just follow them,
depriving people of sleep for days and forcing them to spend days or even weeks in solitude causes great mental stress and yet no one seems to mind that this is done all the times to criminal suspects and prisoners in amrican prisons. so why is the case different when the person is not american?

[jimdmcevoy]

Well, I think the mental stress they are putting on these prisoners is much more than the mental stress acquired from just sleep deprivation and solitude.

Btw I do not condone your said methods of inflicting mental stress on american prisoners, but right now there are bigger fish to fry.

[chabibi]

the article said nothing of punching, kicking or electrocutions. perhaps you are confusing Guantanamo bay with abu graib. these are two different incidents, i will concede that my limited knowledge of the facts is limited, however one seems like a clear case of prisoner abuse and torture and the people involved should receive severe consequences. the other seems like standard interrogation tactics used by the US military. I believe we are talking about the latter.

[man]

I feel like people are discussing the wrong aspects of this issue, and it seems like a lot of the miscommunication is because of differing views of torture.

Dictionary.com defines torture: Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion. Personally, I think that definition is a bit too constrictive, because it rules out more "creative" forms of torture like sleep deprivation. I think that if you eliminate the qualifier "physical" from the definition, you get a closer picture of what we're talking about.

I'm also seeing a lot of people talking about past instances of torture, in discussing whether torture is correct and in discussing whether what's happened here qualifies as torture. I think we need to remember that past cases of torture can't alter what torture is. So discussing past instances of torture has no place in determining whether this instance really was torture. I'm not saying you can't talk about it for other reasons, but you can't let it alter your perception of it.

That being said, this instance, in my eyes, absolutely qualifies as torture. To deny this is to deny the anguish that these detainees experience when these act of depravity are committed. While the prospect of scantily-clad women tantalizing me doesn't really strike fear to my heart, that fact has no significance in determining someone else's impression of it.

I've also heard people justifying torture as if it were something to find justification for. We're the United States of freakin' America. Doesn't torture embody all that we despise? I find it so boggling that the same people who strive to defend liberty are the same ones trying to find justifications for horrifying it.

[BadBoyBenny]

Foregoing the lap dance for the muslim torture room

[QuadsOverQuads]

I would just like to add that there are really two questions here:

(1) "Is torture justified?" (the title of this thread)

(2) does the whole "scantily clad women" thing constitute "torture"?

I just want to be clear here:

As to (1), the answer is an EMPHATIC "no". This is not a matter of debate as far as I'm concerned, nor should it ever be. Torture is off limits, always, period. To adopt any other position is to adopt the position of tyrants, making one's cause de facto illegitimate.

As to (2), I think this story is a pre-emptive PR strike being put out to preemptively discredit the very real evidence of torture that is going to come out now that Guantanamo "detainees" are slowly being released (notably the British citizens that were just let go, after being held for more than two years without charge or trial). If the Bush people can convince us to preemptively associate claims of "torture" with images of "scantily clad women", then the potential outrage of the charges is contained and mostly defused. This is NOT accidental. These are seasoned propagandists, and they know PRECISELY what they are doing. It's the same game they're playing when they quietly slip $250,000 to a "conservative" columnist in exchange for getting their PR talking points put into the paper by a supposedly "independent" source. These people know how to manipulate press coverage to advance their agenda, and they do it shamelessly and aggressively. The fact that people here are already locked in this ridiculous debate over whether "miniskirts" are a form of "torture" is evidence of just how effective their PR machine is. Mark my words: when the truth about Guantanamo comes out, we'll be discussing "torture" in real-world terms. In just the past two weeks, there was a report of a mass-suicide attempt by 23 prisoners there. That's not because of miniskirts. That's because of horrendous conditions that cause prisoners -- en masse -- to seek their own deaths. When the truth comes out (and it will, which is why the Bush PR offensive is starting NOW), people who have defended state torture -- be it at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or anywhere else -- will have to bear the shame of their actions for a long, long time.


q/q

[MMMMMM]

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I dunno man, I'll never know for sure unless I talk to this Muslim prisoner, but I can't think of many things that I could put him through that are worse than convincing him his connection with god is severed.

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How about that AND physical torture? That would certainly be worse.

We cannot be responsible for others' delusions.

Also: if he is using "his connection to God" as a prime cause for committing terrorist acts against others, then it is better that his relationship to God is severed.

[Wake up CALL]

Man wrote:

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I think that if you eliminate the qualifier "physical" from the definition, you get a closer picture of what we're talking about.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice that you get to choose your own defintions. How about if we redefine the word man to mean an incoherent nincompoop?