"Light" Torture?

[Battlehymn Republic]

Browsing the rightwinger boards, regarding torture they have several ways to either support it or deny that it's being committed. How ironic they accuse the other side of "moral absolutism" when torture is concerned. But they do post stories of U.S. soldiers playing Spice Girls or forcing Muslim men to wear female undergarments or whatnot, basically subjecting them to psychological humiliation.

Does that qualify as torture? And if so, should it be banned along with physical torture?

The two ends of the spectrum tend to not admit certain things. For one, I've never seen pro-torture rightwingers admit that the info procured from pain isn't usually accurate. For another, it's stories like these that those against all forms of torture don't really address.

[Wicked Pilot]

Does that qualify as torture? And if so, should it be banned along with physical torture?

When you capture someone in war you do what it takes to keep them from escaping, from hurting you, and from hurting each other. Anything beyond that is off limits.

[Sephirius]

Does that qualify as torture? And if so, should it be banned along with physical torture?

When you capture someone in war you do what it takes to keep them from escaping, from hurting you, and from hurting each other. Anything beyond that is off limits.

Except it's not a declared war, and they are ununiformed combatants. Technically they may be subject to summary execution. It's not like they're POW's.

[Wicked Pilot]

Except it's not a declared war, and they are ununiformed combatants. Technically they may be subject to summary execution. It's not like they're POW's.

Technically they are not POWs, but I would say that from a moral prespective they should be treated as such. We are liberators afterall.

[weemadando]

Does that qualify as torture? And if so, should it be banned along with physical torture?

When you capture someone in war you do what it takes to keep them from escaping, from hurting you, and from hurting each other. Anything beyond that is off limits.

Except it's not a declared war, and they are ununiformed combatants. Technically they may be subject to summary execution. It's not like they're POW's.

Not this again. The majority of people in Gitmo were captured fighting for the Taliban, they had ENOUGH of a uniform as required (usually a coloured band on an arm or head) to classify as uniformed. The reason that the US can get away with this is that technically most of them were "non-naturalised" fighters for lack of a better term and could be treated like mercenaries.

[Darth Wong]

Browsing the rightwinger boards, regarding torture they have several ways to either support it or deny that it's being committed. How ironic they accuse the other side of "moral absolutism" when torture is concerned.

Particularly when there is so much overlap between the militarist right-wingers and the fundie right-wingers, who lay claim to moral absolutism as their exclusive domain.

But they do post stories of U.S. soldiers playing Spice Girls or forcing Muslim men to wear female undergarments or whatnot, basically subjecting them to psychological humiliation.

Does that qualify as torture? And if so, should it be banned along with physical torture?

Ask yourself a question: precisely how do they force the prisoners to weak female undergarments? Do they just dare them to? No, they force the prisoners to wear female undergarments by threatening to do something much more severe and painful to them. In short, they are terrorizing them.

These right-wing apologists are a bunch of flaming retards if they can't figure out that when you see a Muslim prisoner parading around in womens' clothing, his captors must have threatened to do something much worse to him. Do they really need someone to spell it out for them? Are they that stupid? Or are they so dishonest that they know, but pretend they don't?

[Setesh]

Its still a moot point, torture is completely pointless. It does get you fast answers, but not truthful ones. The most basic anti-torture technique if to randomly and tell the truth, so when you are at the point of spilling the truth its mixed in with the lies.

Bush has used this to his advantage, he picked to most conveniant lies and declared them truth to send other peoples children to die.

Torture is on a scale of reliablity below asking them nicely to tell the truth. If you need fast answers and don't care about true/false as long as you get what you want to hear or care about how others see you, it perfect.

I always think of a line I saw from a German Inquisition manual (yes they had manuals on torture)

The accused heretic or witch is not allowed to confess before they are examined(ie tortured), for many would repent and confess before hand to save themselves pain. It is only after they have experianced that kinship with the pain of the savior may they confess.

Translation: Anything they say before torture is a lie to stop the tortue from starting, after they have bled a little then they'll tell the truth.

[Covenant]

Torture is not an intellectual question for the reasons stated: It's not reliable. It's no more reliable than other methods of information extraction, to be sure, and often less. While there are individuals who it'll work on, but without any expectation of success you're probably just torturing EVERYONE and comparing stories.

So it becomes an ethical question, since it's obviously morally wrong to terrorize people. Ethics lets us balance this horrible thing against the hope of something good, the same way we balance shooting someone versus the need to defend ourselves or someone else.

In those cases, the metric is clear. I shoot you because you're going to shoot me. That's the ethical basis for a war. Nobody says that killing people is morally good, but it's ethically acceptable because of the circumstances. Torture is different though. It's not even very effective at getting information, but it ALWAYS causes suffering. Getting shot is a humane way to go sometimes, if you're lucky, but it ALWAYS has the result of hampering someone's ability to harm others.

In this way, torture is basically the exact opposite--ethically--of engaging someone in the field where they're dangerous. It's taking a target who is not dangerous and in your care and treating them to as much pain and terror as you can without causing them to die with the expectation of getting a sliver of information that may be useful.

Light torture is better because, if you can survive the mental aspect, you won't come out of it dead. But the only reason that they use these techniques is because it IS terrifying to them. It's a bit of relativism to say these are not horrifying merely because wearing women's underwear on my head doesn't exactly strike me as the work of a master torturer. It's like saying someone who has a phobia of milk isn't being tortured by me pouring milk over their mouth just because it doesn't bother me.

So while these things ARE better than the kind of torture you do with buzzsaws and blowtorches, it's still torture. You've restricted the pain and suffering to things that don't leave bruises, but that's only from the perspective of damage inflicted.

The real evil of torture isn't broken bones and such, it's inflicting real misery for an iffy bit of intelligence. In many instances it's merely fishing for the right answer (which is bad) or torturing everyone to get a wide array of answers (also bad, since you're hurting everyone now) instead of something more intelligent. So in that sense it's still unethical, despite how soft it is.

[D.Turtle]

Except it's not a declared war, and they are ununiformed combatants. Technically they may be subject to summary execution. It's not like they're POW's.

wrong, Wrong, WRONG!

You can NOT simply execute non-combatants that attacked your troops!

The difference between captured combatants and captured non-combatants that attacked your troops is the following:

Combatants become POW, that are returned to the other side after the war is over, that have certain rules outlining what you can do or not do with them.

Non-combatants that attacked your troops are treated as civilians that broke the law - ie. they are imprisoned, and tried in a normal civilian court with the possibilty to defend themselves.

You CAN NOT summarily EXECUTE them!!!

This info is from my training as an officer of the reserves of the german army.

If you want to look for yourself this (Part 4 of the Geneva conventions) would be a place to start. Start at article 64.
The Additional Protocols Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 of the first Protocol Additional, and the second Protocol Additional go further (and into more detail) but are not signed by the United States (but almost every other country in the world, including North Korea).

But the Geneva Conventions are actually enough already.

[Winston Blake]

Except it's not a declared war, and they are ununiformed combatants. Technically they may be subject to summary execution. It's not like they're POW's.

So if they're not POWs, anything goes? Did it occur to you that summary execution violates basic human rights, and nasty brown people are still human?


Anyway, it doesn't really matter as far as the U.S. is concerned. This is Bush signing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, surrounded by grinning sycophants. It defines 'combatants' as either 'lawful' or 'unlawful', with only 'lawful combatants' being protected by the Geneva Conventions, and granting the President the overall power to define who is an unlawful combatant (for whom anything goes). America is simply going to do whatever the hell it wants and nobody can stop it.

[LeftWingExtremist]

Does that qualify as torture? And if so, should it be banned along with physical torture?

When you capture someone in war you do what it takes to keep them from escaping, from hurting you, and from hurting each other. Anything beyond that is off limits.

Except it's not a declared war, and they are ununiformed combatants. Technically they may be subject to summary execution. It's not like they're POW's.

If their not POWs then their criminals either way they should be treated like any person that breaks the law, put in prison (without being tortured, or mistreated), and given a trial.

[Wicked Pilot]

If their not POWs then their criminals either way they should be treated like any person that breaks the law, put in prison (without being tortured, or mistreated), and given a trial.

On in the case of Iraq you could set a fixed date of a completion of withdrawl, and simply hold them without trial to be released on that date.

[LeftWingExtremist]

If their not POWs then their criminals either way they should be treated like any person that breaks the law, put in prison (without being tortured, or mistreated), and given a trial.

On in the case of Iraq you could set a fixed date of a completion of withdrawl, and simply hold them without trial to be released on that date.

Of course, damned "war" against terror.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Does that qualify as torture? And if so, should it be banned along with physical torture?

When you capture someone in war you do what it takes to keep them from escaping, from hurting you, and from hurting each other. Anything beyond that is off limits.

Except it's not a declared war, and they are ununiformed combatants. Technically they may be subject to summary execution. It's not like they're POW's.

The only reason this is an 'undeclared' war and therefore the combatants aren't in uniform is because the Powers That Be here have declared our troops should be not only able to but nearly make it mandatory to take extreme and unfair advantage of the loophole in the law. I really do believe it's the Bush Regime's purpose to foment terrorism against Americans simply due to their actions ALL having that effect. They're not interested in liberating anything but oil, hate, and the blood of our troops and innocent people.

[Surlethe]

Except it's not a declared war, and they are ununiformed combatants. Technically they may be subject to summary execution. It's not like they're POW's.

If we're not at war, then what the fuck are we doing invading countries and battling insurgents? What makes you think they've not got basic rights common to every human?

EDIT: If the president wants to treat the "war" on terror like an actual war, then the least he can do is be consistent. I'm sick and tired of this not-well-defined gray area bullshit; either we're at war with some entity, or we're not.

[Sephirius]

-snip-

That's what I meant to get at with the above. Under US law, they have no protections.