The playing of loud music, being placed in a very hot of very cold room, not being allowed more than two or three hours of sleep per night, and like at abu graib, panties on the head, barking dog, or being naked with other men **gasp** while not professional and not authorized by those few soldiers, is also NOT torture.
I argue that POWs who REALLY suffered torture at the hands of the nazis, the japanese, the koreans, chinese, the vietnamese, the soviets, and the muslim terrorists would cringe at the suggestion that what is being called "torture" today, is even close to comparable to what they endured, which was real torture. At least, my father argues that, as he was a prisoner of the vietnamese for a short time and told me last year he’d of gladly endured the worst of what was dished out at abu graib rather than what he got in Vietnam. What more can be said than that?
Also, in most cases, if you capture someone that is not specially trained to resist coercion and actual torture or just the threat of it, it is the THREAT of torture that leads to information extraction. As an example, my father has told me over the years, that there were times, when lives were on the line, that known VC prisoners were taken up in helicopters and asked information. If they refused to talk, hanging them half out the platform at 300 feet very much got them in the talking mood. Other times, you can literally just beat the snot out of them, like any good old bar room brawl, and they will talk. The average prisoner will tell you everything you want to know, and then make stuff up when they have nothing else to tell you. The result was, from my father's first hand knowledge, that the information extracted from such methods, definitely saved numerous soldiers and Marines. It allows the ambush of ambushes, the location of depots, location of officers, codes and other information, etc so on.
So the real bottom line is, nothing we have done to islamic terrorists is ANYTHING near as bad as they've done to our captured military personnel, who understand very plainly that surrender is not an option, because if they surrender, they will promptly be executed on he inter net, so I find it offensive when some people suggest that any kind of mental or physical torture makes us no better than the terrorists. To date, WE have not beheaded any terrorists. Televised or otherwise.
Further, if it was your spouse, parent, sibling, child, close friend, anyone you care about, and their life could be saved because the CIA, or someone in the military dangled a prisoner out a helicopter, smacked around, deprived him of sleep, stuck him in a hot or cold room, or even if they did put panties on their head, stripped them bare, or had a dog barking at them, to get his mouth running, and that information led to your loved one NOT being killed, which DOES HAPPEN, would you care that any of those things had to be done so long as your loved one was alive? I for one, would NOT!
It would be nice if the liberals in this country showed as much concern for our military personnel and our civilian population as they do for the "rights" of the terrorists, who, under the Geneva convention we shouldn't take prisoner at all and could shoot on sight with NO quarter being give, since they are un-uniformed enemy combatants, not fighting under a nations flag or as part of an army, and who are dressed as civilians making them "terrorists" under the Geneva conventions and giving them NO protections, allowing us to shoot them on sight ad never take them prisoner. From my perspective, we're being very generous and compassionate that we're taking them prisoner at all and not just killing them all when they give up, like the Geneva Conventions allow us to. Liberals only seem concerned about our military when more get killed so it adds to their precious body count.
I mean, considering our military has the clear right under international law and the Geneva conventions, which our enemies NEVER adhere to, to shoot all terrorists on sight and take NO prisoners, it is insulting for anyone to suggest that using intimidation, coercion, psychological techniques, and mild physical abuse is out of line and should not be allowed, when time has PROVEN that most of the time, such methods provide good intelligence and prevent the needless deaths of troops in the field. Furthermore, I argue that those who are against such techniques have never had anyone they love at risk in a combat zone. After all, the terrorists behead all prisoners, what more are they going to do to them if we use the methods I mentioned to extract information? Murder them TWICE? That's my take on it.
Perhaps. Any links to studies?