Posted on 11/11/2005 9:07:04 AM PST by SirLinksalot
When torture is the only option ...
DAVID GELERNTER
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN's proposed legislation incorporating into U.S. law the Geneva Convention ban on mistreating prisoners. The bill, which bans cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, passed the Senate 90 to 9. To say it's got momentum is putting it mildly.
But President Bush says he will veto the bill unless the CIA is exempted. Vice President Cheney has led the administration's campaign for the exemption. It's a hard sell; pro-torture politicians are scarce around Washington.
But of course you don't have to be "pro-torture" to oppose the McCain amendment. That naive misunderstanding summarizes the threat posed by this good-hearted, wrong-headed legislation. Those who oppose the amendment don't think the CIA should be permitted to use torture or other rough interrogation techniques. What they think is that sometimes the CIA should be required to squeeze the truth out of prisoners. Not because the CIA wants to torture people, but because it may be the only option we've got.
McCain's amendment is a trap for the lazy minded. Whenever a position seems so obvious that you don't even have to stop and think — stop and think.
SNIP
Michael Levin published an article challenging the popular view that the U.S. must never engage in torture. "Someday soon," he concluded, "a terrorist will threaten tens of thousands of lives, and torture will be the only way to save them."
Suppose a nuclear bomb is primed to detonate somewhere in Manhattan, Levin wrote, and we've captured a terrorist who knows where the bomb is. He won't talk. By forbidding torture, you inflict death on many thousands of innocents and endless suffering on the families of those who died at a terrorist's whim — and who might have lived had government done its ugly duty.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"Has it really been known to yield vital and life saving information ?"
That all depends on who the prisoner is, and what he is made of.
Veto it President Bush and then veto the spending bills, any bduget that doesn't include drilling in ANWR and any pork laden crap coming down the pike.
As I understand it, "Outlaw," from our old western history, meant "Outside the protection of the law."
The issues and solutions are the same.
THe problem here is the definition...Hate to say it, but it depends on what the word "torture" is...degrading? as mentionned on another thread, that word means different things to different people. Putting panties on someone's head could be viewed as degrading....changing the temperature in the room between extremes could be viewed as "cruel" by some.
This bill is yet another hinderance in our prosecution of the war. Even if we as a country agreed that we would not torture these people, why on earth would you ever let the enemy know that option is off the table?
I also love how the conclusory statement "torture doesn't work" is used as support for the bill. What basis is there for the statement? Last week's episode of Commander-in-Chief.
How come Hired Goons always seem to find a way to get people to pay gambling debts even if they don't have the money?
If passed into law, you will see these words used in their most liberal sense.
Those who say torture doesn't work hasn't had enough of a taste of it to be convinced otherwise.
Having your hands and feet tied to four corner posts, having a board placed on your chest, and having about 35lbs placed on that board, and letting you recline in such comforts for about four hours will generally result in getting anything you want to know out of someone.
That made me a believer, and it didn't leave a mark.
McCain is a loose phaser. I believe his thinking on the subject, in face of the potential consequences of a massive terror attack, is unsound.
Ping
McCain is pandering to the current events to get his name linked with proper treatment....we don't need this bill... the military already is supposed to adhere to the Geneva Accords and the CIA should be left to do what they need to to extract info in critical situations.....McCain is just blowing smoke to get more telivision spots......
It seems to me that if a terrorist knows that a lead which proves to be false will be severely punished, he will think twice before lying. If, on the other hand, there is no penalty for lying or remaining silent, then there is no incentive to cooperate. Additionally, when dealing with Islamofascists, who are contemptuous of kindness and interpret it as weakness, I believe it is a fatal mistake to exclude severe punishment (torture) from our options.
Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1
"The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized
nor condoned by the US Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation.
Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say
whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."
http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/officersquotes.html
Don't know what we've learned through classic torture techniques, but I'd like to bring up two very important caveats that this article seems to ignore.
One is that, regardless of whether or not the CIA has an internal policy banning torture, the THREAT of torture must never be taken off the table. By passing a publicly-known bill that explicitly prohibits torture, that tells not only the American people, but also the prisoners, that the worst thing a prisoner will face in an American prison is a lack of basic cable TV.
The other is that "torture" covers a wide range of coercive techniques, some of which include direct manipulation of the prisoner's psychology. Sleep deprivation and "truth serum" are the most famous such techniques, but medical science - especially neuropharmacology - has come a long way since the 1960s. We have the abilitiy, for example, to selectively deplete a prisoner's serotonin levels, completely wrecking his mood and morale. If a prisoner is resisting interrogation, we can measure the lack of rise of cortisol levels as he moves into his "happy place", and we can artificially disrupt those levels, making sure that he feels exactly as much stress as we wish him to feel no matter what he might be quietly telling himself to calm himself down. If a prisoner is trying to come up with a convincing lie, we can both monitor and disrupt the activity of creative and visualizational portions of his brain, rendering him neurologically incapable of coming up with anything but the truth.
I am disgusted. Anyone who has authorized torture, secret prisons or participated in their cover-up should face a long prison sentence.
Threats mean nothing if there is no chance of 'em being carried out.
There is a huge difference between doing it for fun or oppressive dominance, and doing it to save a great many lives.
Exactly. Perhaps I should have said "credible threat". In other words, passage of this bill would destroy the credibility of the threat of torture, and would take away a valuable interrogation tool - a tool whose value is independent of whether or not anyone ever ACTUALLY gets tortured.
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