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On Mon, 2 Oct 2006, Vern Green wrote:
OK, I want to weight in here. I removed all previous discussion because
I did not want it to seem like I was commenting on the views of anyone
else here.
First: Waterboarding is a form of torture. Granted it may not leave
permanent scars and is non-lethal, but it is still torture. It is a very
effective form of torture. 95% of all CIA agents who have undergone this
technique in their training break within 5 minutes.
I think "unpleasant" would be a better word than "effective" because a CIA
agent who "breaks" is simply saying "OK, I've had enough." Right? It's
like a game. What is at stake? If you want to see how well they hold up
under torture, bring their first-born child into the room and put the
child in a device that will administer a lethal electrical shock to the
child when the agent presses a button. Put the agent into the waterboard
device with access to the button and tell them, we will torture you now
until you've had enough. Once you've had enough, press the button to kill
your child and we will release you. Now will they break in 5 minutes? I
think none of them would ever break under such conditions. For a medium
level test, you could tell them that they will receive $10,000 if they
don't break. If you offer no incentive, the test of "effectiveness" isn't
worth much.
There is a question as to whether torture is effective or not. I think a
lot of that depends on two things:
1. Does the person know the information you are trying to retrieve. If
the person you are torturing does not know the answers to your
questions, then the information you will receive is suspect. The subject
will tend to tell you anything he thinks you want to know at this point.
True, and important, but when considering "effectiveness" of a procedure,
we probably should limit our analysis to situations where the prisoner
knows something.
2. The relevancy of the information. Some of the people at GITMO have
been detained for four years, what information could they possible have
now that would be relevant to the current crisises? If information
control is a strict as it should be, not up-to-date outside information
should be available to the detainees.
True again. I hope they aren't torturing these guys today.
I am no expert in torture, but it seems to me that the best and most
useful information would be that information retrieved early when a
detainee is first picked up. If you have not broken the subject within 6
months, then to me it would be very hard to get any useful information
from them.
I agree. You've made some good points, but you haven't considered the
situation where the prisoner knows important things that we want him to
tell us. Does torture work then? Many experts say 'no.' I think the
answer is 'no' if the prisoner is highly motivated not to tell us
anything, and they probably are highly motivated. What is to stop a
prisoner from lying? How will we know if the prisoner is lying?
I think that torture sounds like a better idea than it is!
Now the problem here is that most of the detainees are not covered as
Prisoners of War by the Geneva Convention. We have talked about this
before and other people mention the same thing. To be a prisoner of war,
the combatant needs to be part of a uniformed army or militia, or
clearly display such association. To me this clearly does not cover the
majority of those in GITMO.
It is a quandary to be sure. I personally can respect the need for the
information gathered by torture. Additionally, we can expect no
following of the Geneva Convention from the enemy in this regard, and
since they are really not part of any organized country, there is no
country to lay sanctions on, nor any true leader to lodge a formal
complaint against, like we might with a Germany in World War 2.
I think we have to consider the reasons for complying with the Geneva
Convention and consider if the fact that certain prisoners are
non-uniformed, etc., gives us a good reason not to apply the Geneva
Convention in making decisions about how they should be treated. Is it in
our national interest to extend the Geneva Convention to such detainees?
I think the answer probably is 'yes' and I have heard no convincing
argument to the contrary.
This places us in a very interesting dilemna that is not so easy to
figure out. These are the kinds of questions we have elected officials
to figure out. I do not envy their position in figuring any of this out.
I would hope they have read all the particulars and are making an
informed decision. I would also hope they have studied and understand
the ramifications of their decision to vote yay or nay on the subject.
The problem in this regard is we all know that so many (democrats and
republicans both) do not do a good job in this regard. Worse, most of
them are voting along party lines. Everytime we see a party-line vote it
goes to tell me that it does not really about the merits of the bill,
whether good or bad. They are voting in order to maintain their own
power base.
Unfortunately, politicians, especially in an election year, are motivated
largely by the effect their decision has on their chances at re-election,
and the effect their vote has on the chance of re-election for other
members of their party. If the American people were extremely
well-informed, our politicians would do good things all the time. As it
stands, they do lots of horrible manipulative things and "we" fall for it!
Regarding the questions under consideration here. Suppose that a
politician believes that torture never works for extracting valid
information from prisoners, that torturing prisoners of any kind harms our
international reputation and moral authority, that torturing anyone
increases the probability that our agents and soldiers will be tortured in
other nations and that the net effect to our nation from torturing
prisoners will be devastatingly negative and long-standing. Would such a
politician oppose torture if he knew that by doing so he would be voted
out of office for seeming to be "weak on terror" and that he would be
replaced by someone who would vote in favor of torture? Some might, but
most would not. Sadly, this is the cynical political world we're dealing
with right now. Politicians are a bunch of lying manipulators, and no, I
don't mean Republicans, I mean all of the successful ones.
Mike
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