Should we use torture to stop terrorism?

TownHall.com ^ | Thursday, November 1, 2001 | Steve Chapman

[Havisham]

I am being completely serious about this. Anyone who's had children knows that sleep deprivation is torture. I think sleep deprivation of terrorism suspects is an acceptable tool for extracting intelligence that will save American lives.

[sockmonkey]

hmm, does the possibility of stopping another 9/11 by using extreme measures on those who may have knowledge of such acts before they occur justify such measures?
In my mind's eye, I see the lady at the WTC holding her baby out the window, trying to keep it away from the heat and smoke? I'm not sure what she'd say, and she can't speak for herself since she's dead.

[JusticeLives]

This torture debate raises a flag for me. We already do what's 'necessary' to extract information during interrogations. I think this mental exercise is merely to get the public used to the idea of torture being neccessary to extract life-saving information from terrorists while giving the impression torture isn't used in the United States. (Pls see An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control at http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc.htm)

For me, this debate is akin to the death penalty issue. For now I'm sitting on the fence.

[JusticeLives]

This torture debate raises a flag for me. We already do what's 'necessary' to extract information during interrogations. I think this mental exercise is merely to get the public used to the idea of torture being neccessary to extract life-saving information from terrorists while giving the impression torture isn't used in the United States. (Pls see An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control at http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc.htm)

For me, this debate is akin to the death penalty issue. For now I'm sitting on the fence.

[A CA Guy]

If we know it will save American lives for sure, why not?

We can make them listen to Cher while looking at Hillary pictures.

[Aztech]

Or listen to Yoko Ono in full self-satisfaction mode looking at semi-nude J. Reno photos.

I think that is explicitly not allowed in the Geneva Convention update of 2001

[Texasforever]

....the 5th amendment exist precisely as a deterrent to coerced confessions...

Then the answer is simple, reclassify all terrorists to prisoners of war and turn them over to the military for "interrogation" with the implicit threat that they are combatants without uniform and subject to execution as spies. This IS NOT a law enforcement issue, this is a military action directed at our own soil and people.

[Stopspin]

What will the Terrorists do ?

Will they Honor Your Daughters ?

[Travis McGee]

In the early 90s the Philippinos found an apartment in Manila full of bombs, terrorist plans etc. They cought one fellow. They were very rough, and in a few weeks he became talkative.

The plan he divulged was Ramsi Youseff's plot to blow up 12 American 747s and DC-10s over the Pacific on the same day. More arrests followed, and the plot was broken up. The bombs were kept off the planes, several thousand people, mostly Americans, didn't die. The roughly treated prisoner is fine today.

Tell me that you wish he had been spared the month of rough treatment, and the jumbo jets had been blown up instead, maybe with your family aboard.

This is a WAR, and the rules are not the same as during PEACE.

[Free Vulcan]

Ding ding! You get the grand prize. Put them under the UCMJ and treat them like POW's. Furthermore, tell them that after we kill them, we'll chop them into chunks and have the remains fed to hogs (and keep a pen of them closeby as visual reinforcement).

[Texasforever]

I fear that we are losing focus here. This is NOT a civil matter. Many say that we have not declared war BUT war has been declared on us and we have NO obligation to reciprocate and place ourselves under the Geneva Convention that such a declaration would entail. There is no reason for us to provide combatants constitutional protections just because they committed their acts while in this country.

[JoeA]

Absolutely not!!!

NO!

We should not use torture just to get information from terrorists. Torture them because they deserve it.

[Lancey Howard]

I liked the original idea of taking the captured terrorists on vacation to Guatemala.

Torture can never be "officially" permitted. (Uh, remember that occasionally US servicemen are captured.) However, if certain elements in that haven of human rights Guatemala want to persuade information out of some scumbag terrorists, well, what are we to do? Understand also that those terrorists could never be left alive. Dead men tell no tales.

[Lancey Howard]

By the way, didn't the Bush administration recently get confirmed a UN representative who handled
certain "information gathering" groups down there in Central America somewhere? I forget his name,
but I understand he is knowledgeable about electricity and "smothering" techniques.

[cartoonistx]

Why is this even a debate? Have we Americans lost our common sense? Of course we must use EVERY means at our disposal to prevent these human swine from ever doing this to us again. Water torture if necessary!

If we must be 'civil' to the barbarians, hows about we flood their jail cells with sodium pentathol gas and then stick 'em under the hot lights for a few hours of grilling.

[cartoonistx]

Why is this even a debate? Have we Americans lost our common sense? Of course we must use EVERY means at our disposal to prevent these human swine from ever doing this to us again. Water torture if necessary!

If we must be 'civil' to the barbarians, hows about we flood their jail cells with sodium pentathol gas and then stick 'em under the hot lights for a few hours of grilling.

[Travis McGee]

I am all for a formal declaration of war. But what we are engaged in is war whether it is formally declared or not.