How will the War on Terror be remembered ?

Militarily controlling Afghanistan and installing a client state there was and is part of the PNAC, yes. Those guys have always been - - - how do we put this - - - flexible - - - in their public justifications for their ventures.

I have never see an actual argument for not. I have seen denials of what was done.

Water torture, as it was called until recently, used to torture someone, is torture as any ordinary person of any time or place in history except modern Americans of certain political persuasions understand the term. And it does threaten life and limb, as well as cause severe pain, uncontrollable panic, and utter misery.

And if you had been waterboarded until you publically confessed to raping your mother and demontrated the techniques you employed, and then waterboarded some more until you could no longer remember what you had confessed to, carry on a normal conversation, or sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time for the dreams, you would not need the broken limbs or damaged lungs or EEG abnormalities consequent to waterboarding to recognize that you had been tortured - even according to your "understanding".

One of the books on the US torture progream is titled "Leave No Marks". That policy in its many manifestations - such as the common statement from US guards that they knew they would only get in trouble if they killed their captives, so they took care not to - does not indicate an absence of torture.

Let's try that kind of "analysis" on burning someone with boiling water. I've scalded myself with boiling water: It didn't hurt that badly, and left no scars or permanent damage. As an experience, I'd choose a repetition of it over chain gang labor for a month. So the American ally and recipient of aid currently running Uzbekistan is not really torturing the political enemies America renders to him, with his boiling water "interrogation" ?

Or is the question not really one of method ? Are we yet able to grow up, dump the Hollywood sensationalism, and agree that anything being used so that it forces confession out of a desperate captive from fear of its continuation is torture ?

It seems to me that there is no lengh some Americans will not go to, and no depth to which they will nto descend, and no absurdity they will not accept, in the efforts to deny what is right in front of their faces at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Bucca, et al and ad naseum.

Your assumption that the expansion of American power worldwide concerns itself much with "American ideals" is hopeful and charming in theory, but without evidence in practice.

 

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So, what should we have done? Invaded, destroyed al Qaeda, then walked away with a hearty "Well, our work is done" as the bloodbath for control of the country began?

Perhaps we should not have invaded at all? Just let al Qaeda operate freely and with impunity, because those who want to shield terrorists said "no" to our request to stop them? Seriously and with as much respect as I can manage, I do not see what alternative you think was a good one. It seems to be "resign yourself to the notion that al Qaeda is immune from punishment so long as they stay inside Afghanistan."

We couldn't even cordon off the country to hem them in, since (a) that also violates Afghani sovereignty and (b) Iran would never have let us maintain a force on their border, nor would they have maintained one themselves. So, the position I suspect your advocating boils down, in opractice, to, "Hey, bombings happen, learn to deal with that." I suppose if we get lucky and capture one alive on American soil before or after he carries out the next attack then you'd let us try him.

Have you looked very hard? I mean I have seen denials that we torture, but the question always turned on "what is torture" versus what is "enhanced interrogation"? You have to admit, however you draw the line between those two, there will always be *something* close to it, and there will always be some one, more sensitive to pain than the rest, who will say that that something is over the line, and is also torture.

In world where everyone agrees there is no torture, there would be no punishment at all, because there's 6-7 billion people here and each has their own standard for what torture is, and some of those people are crazy.

Source? The definitions I find for water torture are (1) water dripping incessantly on ones head and (2) torture using water. Personally I always thought "water torture" was the former, differentiated from the "water cure."

It also fails to meet the definition of the UN Convention Against Torture. Besides, I am not "of a certain political persuasion" as you attempt to snidely suggest. Politically, my opinions are all over the place. That tactic would be akin to me saying "Some people just love terrorists and want them to kill Americans." It might make me feel better to passive aggressively attack you that way, but it's not a good argument.

I agree on panic and misery, I have never heard of it threatening life and limb unless done wrong. (Done wrong, shining a light in some one's eyes can threaten life and limb, as in "Ow! That light bulb's hot and you're burning my eyes with it!") Done wrong, incarceration can kill too ("I thought you were feeding the prisoners?!")

Again, though the Convention against torture requires "severe" pain, not just any 'ole pain. I'm happy to see what sources you have on the pain (not sadness, misery or panic...pain) caused by waterboarding and I'm open to reevaluating.

Sure. And if I were locked up without charge for 20 years I might decide that western prisons are horribly unethical and need to be abolished. I get that waterboarding is a horrible experience. You keep pretending that those who disagree with you don't get that, but it's only because you seem to be unwilling to comprehend the possibility that someone would take in the same information as you, and draw a different conclusion on the semantics of what is and is not "torture."

I also get that it is an interrogation technique. If it were applied to me I might well confess to things I did not do, in order to escape being water-boarded. Bringing up "raping my mother" is a blatant appeal to emotion, and hence a logical fallacy. Ask yourself: why are you resorting to classic fallacies like the appeal to emotion in order to make your point? I am not suggesting that it proves your point is without any merit, rather that you are arguing a moot position—an issue of literal semantics—and struggling to find a way to satisfy your position without arriving at the truth: that it's debatable.

No, it does not, but leaving no marks is a decent policy, since things that do leave marks are more likely to cross the line than those that do not. The point of the policy, as I understand it, is *not* "hide your torture", it's "use these techniques and try to do no permanent harm to the captive, because that would be wrong." Would you be happier if the book were called "How to leave marks"?

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I've hit myself with boiling water too, and it hurt like Hell. Scalding *does* leave permanent scars if prolonged (just like fire...burn your fingers with a match and the skin will heal, burn your whole arm in a burning building and you can expect to have both scarred flesh and a heightened risk of skin cancer). If you survive the scalding, the odds of getting an infection are pretty high in cases where scarring results.

In any event, you did mention "exposure to temperature extremes" and I mentioned being confined by chains while doing hard labor under the hot Sun. If the "extremes" to which the prisoners were subjected were on the order of 200 degrees Fahrenheit or more, then I freely concede that is torture (and your boiling water reference then becomes both understandable and apt given the treatment). If, on the other hand, the temperatures are on the order of 120 degrees F, then my "hot Sun" example seems more apt, and the boiling water analogy a wild exaggeration.

IMO, being chained to a floor in an uncomfortable position is not as bad as being scalded by boiling water. It might be comparably bad to the work of chain gangs in the summer, but it's no boiling water. YMMV, but if they give you a choice, don't volunteer for the water.

I fully agree that the use of boiling water constitutes "severe" pain (though I know you disagree, given you don't think it "hurts that badly"), but has that been done by Americans, or are you just arguing that it's been done through rendition? I do agree that the Administration should not have rendered subjects to foreign countries knowing and hoping they'd be tortured. I don't know that it's the equivalent of doing the torturing yourself, but there I grant you that they crossed a line. Does crossing that line in those instances render the War on Terror an "evil" thing. No. Isolated events can be deplored and corrected without throwing our hands in the air and ceasing to press our advantage against al Qaeda.

Please. You lost my respect again. So anyone who agrees with you is a "grown up" and the rest of us—the children—just need to shut up and do what mummy and daddy tell us. (That said, please see above, you are big on telling us what we cannot do, lest you call us names, not so good with giving us details on what we can do to effectively keep ourselves safe.)

And, no, we cannot agree to that. Causing fear in a person is not torturing them. Causing fear to elicit a confession is not in and of itself torture. In fact, in the War on Terror we're not even *after* confessions. The interrogations are about gaining future intelligence, not post hoc admissions of "guilt." The Bush administration considers this a war, not a criminal investigation, and you don't need the enemy to "confess" to being the enemy in a war.

More fundamentally, though, there is a working (in not entirely clear) definition of torture:

Under that definition, (a) using fear to elicit a confession can be, but is not always, torture and (b) whether the captive is "desperate" or not doesn't factor in in any obvious way (unless you think "severity" is a sliding scale based on the state of mind of the target—a defensible, but not entirely obvious proposition). From there you have to take note of what the Senate said when it ratified this language, as they decided to explain their interpretation of it:

That signing statement is a plausible interpretation of the definition. Arguable as well, but not something restricted to the retarded children who need you to edumucate them.

And there is no doubt at all that some people will go to just as great a length to demonize the U.S. as she attempts to defend her citizens from harm. Nary a word about the immorality of those we fight, it seems to provide you some pleasure or satisfaction to attack the character of Americans. You do know, I assume, that not everyone in Guantanamo is an innocent, right? I know that there are innocent people there and that some of the interrogation is directed at the wrong targets, but I don't get the sense from your posts that you acknowledge that complexity. Your posts, to my reading, suggest that, since Americans like me are evil, anyone who opposes us must be good and pure.

In that sense, the sense of the world in black and white, you're very much like our President. You just reverse who the "evildoers" are.

I am not a neocon. I do not (as in *not*) ascribe to the neocon goal of spreading democracy. Nor do I ascribe to the goal of freeing Tibet, ending genocide in Darfur, or any other nation-building exercise. I was pissed when people the world over offered mea culpas over the genocide in Rwanda, because I believed it was none of our business to wade in there and end the hardship by imposing an order that we happened to like. I opposed the intervention in Kosovo for that reason too. Neocons saw all those as opportunities, I see them as traps. So ease your fears for me, but don't you ever let me catch you posting in favor of intervening in foreign affairs to end suffering or promote a humanitarian agenda, because I will bookmark this thread and rub your nose in how much you hate the arrogance of people who do think that way. The only interventions that should ever be tried, of course, are those where all sides invite you to enter.

 

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkBuQfZfFo&eurl=http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7440

Conyers on why he isn't impeaching W and Cheney.

Did you take that BS as argument ? I took it as fairly ridiculous denial of plain fact.

And anyone with any sense has to admit that what the US has been doing to its captives is way over any reasonable, historically customary, or commonly encountered line. Pretending we're splitting hairs on definitions here is not going to work outside of White House press conferences.

Done as the US torturers are doing it, incarceration threatens life and limb (solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, etc, is medically dangerous). Whatever is done to cause panic and misery sufficient to "break" a resistant captive, is torture. That's what torture is.

When used to torture captives, it elicits false confessions against extreme resistance, and causes serious psychological symptoms (including PTSD, flashbacks,memory loss, etc) that last for years, may even be permanent - that good enough for you ? How would you go about obtaining better evidence than that - which you already know ?

As a rule of thumb adopted by abusive guards the world over, it's for covering ass if exposed to decent and competent people. As a sophistication of technique obtained through modern psychiatric investigations (such as Ewan Cameron's famous studies) it is based on the discovery that pain and misery without justifiying injury, especially if self-inflicted (stress positions, etc) is more psychologically crippling and effective at breaking the target than direct assault. It's a refinement of the bamboo needle under the thumbnail or tiger cage approach.

For how long? Inwhat circumstances ? You keep bringing in these odd and irrelevant comparisons of technique - anything used as torture is being used to create extreme misery, fear, pain, etc. Being chained to the floor in discomfort until you pull your own hair out in your misery is probably worse than spilling a lilttle tea water on your arm, no ?

The Spanish Inquisition used sleep deprivation - with the same basic ass-cover, in a little different form: it was OK because it did not draw blood. That was the Inquisition's version of "leave no marks". And it was handy for justifying live burning - no blood is spilled (unless the torturer does it wrong, as you observe). Just as "leave no marks" is handy for excusing noise, temperature, and drowning tortures. You don't have to tell the target that you are going to do it right, after all,so you lose little threat factor.

They were not, and are not, isolated events. And our ability to "correct" these programs remains to be demonstrated - so far, they haven't even been deplored: too many people excusing major programs and chains of prisons and fleets of airplanes and squads of trained personnel and reams of policy as "isolated events".

Another slip in the reading comprehension there. Try to read what I write, not what I am supposed to be saying according to your preconeptions, eh ?

As long as you're sure. Do you have any evidence of that ? It would be the first State torture program whose major result was such information, in the history of the world AFAIK. All the others have been mainly used for politically useful confession and show trial "evidence", public intimidation and oppression, etc.

Now you are not only misreading to fit your expecations, but wildly inventing. I've posted nothing like that, even approximately.

 

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Propaganda.

Impossible to succeed by it's definition, but successful in allowing the US to do what they wanted to do.

 

Pretending that there is a set in stone definition and that no two people can disagree on it is disingenuous. Your definition of it, meanwhile, has no relation whatever to the historical or customary one, and only "commonly encountered" if one takes figurative uses into account. See below.

Again, please refer to the actual Convention against Torture and you will see that it, by its terms, requires "severe pain or menatal suffering." Not simply anything that elicits statements from a resistant subject, which would include many bothersome but non-painful interrogation techniques. Hell, it would include good cop-bad-cop style interrogations or any other psychological manipulation.

No, as PTSD can be brought on by fear alone, and not simply as a result of experiencing pain. Soldiers on active duty suffer PTSD without suffering a scratch, as do police and firefighters, yet I do not think it can be said that their employers are torturing them. It is an emotional reaction to psychological trauma, but not "pain" in the plain meaning of that word. PTSD certainly can arise as a result of pain as well, but its not a necessary precursor.

I think you are assuming what you intend to prove. Because they are to use techniques that do no permanent injury, they are torturers, because many torturers like to use those techniques to cover their asses. The alternative theory is that they use those techniques because they do not want to cause severe pain or permanent physical injury to the captive. Why? Possibly because those are the actual historical and customary hallmarks of torture, not the "likely to elicit information from a resistant captive" standard you propose.

Which is "worse" is, as I have been indicating, an entirely subjective matter. That said, where is your evidence of anyone on U.S. custody pulling their hair out in misery over the stress positions. I have worked with prisoners who have pulled hair out in misery over having been incarcerated. That's it, just plain old prison was enough to get people to cut themselves, pull out hair, bang their heads against walls until the bled, etc. Surely the standard cannot therefore be anything that makes you pull your hair out its torture, as that renders every prison system "torturous" to some group of inmates

First, that the Spanish inquisition did something is irrelevant. That Hitler loved Blondi does not mean that people who love dogs are Nazis or otherwise somehow suspect. Second, again, you are assuming the motivation is to disguise torture. Admittedly, if you assume that, then you have a strong argument that the U.S. is torturing. If you don't assume it and instead intend to prove that proposition, they you have a bare assertion. The way to prove your assertion, it seems to me is by finding a definition of torture that the international legal community has generally endorsed, comparing it to actual (not hypothetical hair pulling) cases of real prisoners held by the U.S. and showing that U.S. conduct violates that established and binding standard.

Your argument thus far boils down to repeating "it's obvious" over and over again and expecting me to roll over and declare you the winner.

You also seem to be assuming that all the U.S. servicemen involved *want* to torture and so are following what (under your view of things) would be "obviously" illegal orders. I am not sure why you think that, but I can't imagine how your position could work were that not the case, since the soldiers would likely leak word of such orders with far more specific details than have come to light thus far.

Calling things "programs" does not in fact render them into systematized crimes. It is undeniable under international law that nations *do* have the right to seize unlawful combatants, same as they do POWs, and hold them without trial, for example. (Was every POW seized in WWII correctly identified as such? Probably not. Were the Allies required by international law to set up tribunals for the cases where the seizure was wrongful? No.) In this case, though, because you do not like the U.S., I think you'd deny them the right to seize anyone.

Again, not that you offer up any way to protect ourselves from terrorists, other than the War on Terror. Do you have any practicable solutions? Or is our alternative to withdraw, let everyone go, and hope that pacifism wins the day?

Snideness aside, let's take a look at the quote to which I was responding:

The implication of that seems to be in the bolded text, that "anything being used [to] force [a] confession out of a desperate captive from fear of its continuation is torture."

My response, as quote by you, was:

The first part is a very nice paraphrase by me of what you wrote, so no reading comprehension problem there. Perhaps the "problem" must comes up because you so not like the second sentence. I take that to be agreement on your part. Causing someone to feel fear is not torture. If I am correct in assuming you agree, that is the most reasonable position you seem to have taken in the debate this far. (Why did I have that sentence, you may be wondering? The implication I intended you to draw by juxtaposing it with the sentence following it and without me spelling it out for you is that "torture" is not really defined by the torturer's reasons or the results of the torture. If I pierce a man's stomach with needles to get information and that is torture, does it cease to be torture if I do so only because I hate him? Is it not torture if he endures the pain and never gives me the information? Either the act itself is torturous, really, or it's not. Whether it is undertaken with a particular intent or actually achieves a desired result is definitely secondary. If you remove any extraneous result-oriented qualifier from your proposed definition though, and it contracts to just 'an act which elicits (great) fear." That, imo, cannot be a definition of torture unles syou add something to it beyond mere fear (like pain).)

The third sentence is the more direct refutation of your statement in the context of international law and I'd grant that perhaps I should have expanded it. I was assuming a certain amount of holistic reading on the part of the reader, but to be more express and hand-holdy I might have said:

"Causing fear to elicit a confession is not in and of itself torture unless, under the accepted definition of torture under the Convention Against Torture, the interrogation can also be said to have caused severe physical or mental pain or suffering. Under the U.S.'s entirely plausible interpretation of this definition, it the fear (or other mental suffering) must be accompanied by severe physical pain or elicited by the threat of severe physical pain."

You offered, in effect, a definition of "torture" in the text of yours I quoted and I was expressing my view that your definition was inadequate. To wit, your definition omitted the notion of "severity" from the calculation that is present in the Convention, which is the only legal standard I know of applicable in this case. I have no doubt that you interpret the concept of "severe mental pain" differently than the U.S. does, but again, I do not see their interpretation as completely arbitrary or out of bounds in light of the wording of the Convention.

Those confessions were also paraded about publicly, because that was their point: propaganda that the aggressor was right. In this case, the U.S. was attacked first and we have not paraded any of the guilty souls out to justify our positions. We've won that war (except perhaps with the extremists) in that everyone knows al Qaeda is guilty. As such, confessions are politically useless to the U.S., and the trials are not public affairs in the first place so the confessions (if there are any) are not getting any publicity. The only reasons to use the aggressive interrogation techniques now that seem plausible to me are (i) for the sake of punishment, (ii) for the sale of sadistic pleasure, or (iii) to obtain intelligence on future operations and other members of the organization. Retribution and sadism are always a risk and the military has rules and regulations designed to limit the risk of that occurring, and where it occurs it would be a crime, hence there were convictions in the Abu Graihb case. (Perhaps, arguably, not enough, and perhaps, again arguably, only at low levels, but if you were the low level interrogator who does that actual work at Guantanamo, I think the point would be made to you...follow the illegal order at your own risk.) The third reason seems to be most obvious reason to have such a public system set up as the one in Guantanamo Bay.

To turn it around, in light of the realities we face, the limited publicity being given to the proceedings, what makes you think confessions would be good for us?

Fine. I accept your apology. Now, how about having one post where you condemn the actions of the terrorists instead the the U.S. actions taken to combat them? (Not even admitting that U.S. has the right to combat them, for fear you would not concede that.) Barring that, how about you give us some indication of a way to take the offense against al Qaeda that would not have involved taking action in Afghanistan? Perhaps you can even enlighten me on a method of interrogation that involves no psychological coercion of any kind since apparently anything that elicits information against extreme resistance has the chance of being torture if you, iceaura, do not happen to like its psychological effects on the target (let alone if it causes any physical discomfort).

 

The first part is an exact quote of me, not a paraphrase by you. The second part is you misreading that quote, apparently, as referring to fear as torture.

That's why I wouldn't. Pretending that there is a common, reasonable, extant "definition" of torture under which the treatment of some of the captives at Gitmo, Abu, Bagram, et al, would not qualify is likewise disingenuous. Would you ?

And so what then, in your best guess, brought on the traumatic level and duration of fear that you allege is a reasonable cause of the debilitation present in some of the people "interrogated" by the US ?

There are many sources, publications, etc, explaining why these techniques are used. There is a reasonable synopsis of their most recent and indicative origins in the book Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. Their immediate origins lie partly in the brainwashing techniques of the Korean War - not known for eliciting reliable info, these techniques.

US torture programs have, according to the defense lawyers and medical personnel, the FBI witnesses and the investigation testimony and the photos taken, and a reading of the interrogation training manuals as well as a perusal of the antecedents of their training and techniques, caused severe pain and permanent injury (we note the apparent allegation that mental injury is not "physical" somehow) to many dozens of captives.

Bullshit.

A very famous FBI eyewitness account. I note that you have come to your opinions about the torture at Gitmo, Abu, et al without bothering to make even the smallest investigations into the matter. Maybe a good place to start would be Sy Hersh's articles in the New Yorker, and Stephen Miles's various articles and interviews.

KSM's "confessions" were spread all over the papers - big headlines. The confessions of others have been used in various ways to defend and expand the new programs of bounty and disappearance, offshore jailing, and abusive detention infrastructure of various kinds.

Which is one possibility for the key memory that will remain with us from TWAT - that infrastructure, I mean. It has in potential invalidated most of the provisions in the Bill Of Rights in the US Constitution, for example, and created possibly permanent institutions (legal, political, and physical) for violation of them.

The question to ask is: what is "good", in this context, and who is "we" ?

 

challanger it could well depend on how the US can handle the morgage crisis currently. If the whole country implodes and it takes others with it (like china and india) we are in for a domino effect of monumental proportions and it can all be traced back to the US goverment funding the wrong things like war at the expence of its people's needs like health care.

 

LMAO I agree 100% Personally I cannot think of the war on terror without Nancy Regan’s ‘War on Drugs’ coming to mind… (By the way what ever happened to that war?) Or the Oklahoma City bomber who was an American citizen as wonder bread as it can possibly get and yet when Bush declared “The War on Terrorism” he didn’t invade Oklahoma…..

 

Neo cons also only favour democracy that favours them .

 

Yeah, the blame game. I think It'll be remembered for triggering the resource wars, and causing a volatile economy.
Because face it. Bush's war did cause the Oil prices to rise and stay there.

 

It will be remembered as the beginning of the Amero.

 

Way to split hairs. Please reread your quote in its exactitude and you will see that I in fact altered it somewhat to get rid of the meaningless words that you attached to the front of it.

As for the second sentence, it is explained above. It's not a misreading of what you wrote, it's just that I thought you were reasonably clever. When I discovered my error, I explained the quote. Now that I discover you do not even understand the express (if parenthetical) explanation, I don't feel particularly inclined to restate the explanation, but I'll give you the simpler version, but what that hay:

Your definition was dumb. Take away the dumb parts and all you said was "Torture make people afraid. That's what torture is." Granted you said that torture is making people afraid so they will confess, but as I pointed out the "make people confess" is not really relevant. Something does not cease to be torture just because the torturer's motive changes. If he tortures you to death just to watch you die, it's still torture.

Again, I thought you'd pick up the point, which was really an aside, but you did not pick ip the point. Sorry, didn't mean to leave you this confused.

I would draw a distinction here. certainly some people have been tortured while in U.S. custody. Have those acts been acts of the US government or of rogue soldiers/agents? If we confine ourselves to acts condoned by the U.S. government, then there are certainly definitions of torture that allow for water boarding, for example, in fact I quoted the definition and discussed it at length, you just keep failing to respond to it except seemingly to deny its existence.

The darkest of the gray cases of an acts condoned by the government is in cases of rendition. That said, rendition does have one redeeming quality in that it raises a good question. If we <3 torture so much, why did we ever use rendition? Why turn prisoners over to governments that might torture them, if we are perfectly willing to do it ourselves? Like Chewbacca living on Endor, it makes no sense.

On rendition itself, it was a despicable practice, but there's clearly a logical distinction to be made between torturing someone and surrendering them to another sovereign nation while aware that they will use torture.

Fear. We established, many times, that fear is not torture. Fear can cause PTSD though. To be honest, I am not sure why you this is so complicated for you. I get that you think the fear is generated by long term pain (severe pain? That you never answer.) Since you have never shown that severe physical pain was inflicted or threatened, it's not clear to me why the U.S. is foreclosed from relying on its very long standing and well publicized understanding of the definition of "torture" used under the Convention Against Torture (other than the fact that you may think the Convention's definition is wrong, but you have yet to give a workable defintion of your own for reasons stated, twice).

I never said that elicit reliable information. Perhaps it was another thread but in fact I have indicated that I do not think they do, and I am opposed to them on practical grounds for that reason. My opposition does not make it "torture." My opposition does not color my view of whether the administration's definition of torture is a valid one. Here, as in many of my threads with Buffalo Roam, I do not disagree with you from a policy perspective, but I think you assume facts not clearly in evidence and make lousy and illogical arguments that boil down to the obviousness (to you, subjectively) of the proposition you intend to prove, such as "there is no reasonable definition of torture under which the treatment of some of the captives at Gitmo, Abu, Bagram, et al, would not qualify". (I am assuming you get to define "reasonable" and the Convention Against Torture's definition must at least be skirting the line of what you'd call reasonable, since only certain interpretations of it agree with your position.)

I have also admitted on several occasions that the methods used are onerous and highly distressing to those subject to them. You assume that I am unaware of these things because I am not toeing your supposed "reasonable" line, but I am aware. They elicit false confessions because they are so terribly distressing and fear inducing. Distressing people is not necessarily "torture." Making them feel fear isn't either. I believe we agree on that. Is the issue that you still feel that inducing fear as an interrogation method is always torture? Suppose the fear were fear of being placed in a gang-filled prison? Suppose the interrogation were of a run of the mill murder suspect and the fear came from the DA lying to that that suspect saying that they had a mountain of evidence against him and that he'd get the death penalty unless he "told the truth"? Surely those are not torture, and yet the latter leaves the suspect (who might be innocent, and who might not) fearing for his life. It might well elicit a false confession (and it has, in the past). Fear is not enough, nor is fear used as an interrogation tool.

Now, this may be a point for you. Finally. Please give me a few links and let's see what can be corroborated and what is actually attributable to the U.S. and was inflicted intentionally,not accidentally.

Wow. Great argument. You, sir, have a wit that can only be called "swiftian."

I note that you have never cited any of this before. Again, please supply a link. Unlike you, my opinions are open to change if you can show that it can be tied to an official U.S. policy and there is not reasonable way to exclude it from the definition of torture used in the Convention. So far your entire argument has been "it's obvious" and to sneer and condescend to anyone who challenges your views. Arrogance is not an argument.

 

I prefer what the original said, with the dumb parts that make it mean something different left in. That's especially true if you are going to attribute the meaning to me.

So overwhelming preponderance of evidence is insufficient, and "proof" is required. I don't really know what you would accept, that hasn't been presented to you in the articles you claim to have read. But I also note you asked me for source and link to the FBI eyewitness accounts you had not encountered, and which Hersh documents - so perhaps rereading Hersh is in order. Unless you're just screwing around with me, as above with the quotes.

And it does not cease to be torture because the techniques employed are not sufficiently dramatic for Hollywood. We were discussing the identification of torture, and I pointed out that your attempt to classify things as not torture because of the means employed was stupid. In particular, your comparison of stress position shackling and temperature manipulation with chain gang labor was utterly asinine - technique is completely irrelevant. You can torture someone with a pencil eraser, OK? You can sure as hell torture them by waterboarding. It's hard not to torture someone by waterboarding - as an "interrogation" technique, that's about all it's good for.

And how do you know ? If you are a complete moron, and you can't tell whether your practice of suffocating people until they break down and babble is torture, consider this: When desperate fear of a procedure's continuation forces false confession from very resistant victims, that's a fucking clue.

How about: They're stuck with them. That's what they've been saying, lately, as it becomes more and more difficult to ship the remainder of the mentally damaged and psychologically unstable captives home without charges.

They appear to have planned on holding and torturing actual guilty people. How were they supposed to know they'd be getting mostly people bought for big bounty from tribal enemies or other entrepreneurs?

That's under an assumption of basic innocence all around. There are darker possibilities, and they are very real in cases like this: regimes like this one seems to see itself as being do have a use for the imprisonment of innocents, and the arbitrary abuse of people only casually involved with their enemies.

For one reason, we curry favor with people like Hekmatyer by rendering his enemies. For another, we haven't been torturing that much - this is mostly new. The US doesn't love it, and traditionally doesn't do it in house. We used to outsource almost exclusively, and just provide training and supervision for client state torturers. So we've been phasing in a new behavior, building new kinds of prisons, setting up the legal structure, training the personnel, establishing the media handling and security, and so forth.

Unless you have, as Miles has, been to the prisons and spoken to the doctors and interrogators and dog handlers and guards and so forth. Unless you have, as Miles has, investigated the origins of the captives in these prisons - such as the bounty payments that brought in the majority of Gitmo's early waves, or the whole-street roundups that filled Abu Ghraib - and realized what that meant for the likelihood of "guilt". Unless you have, as Miles has, read the official reports of the US military and the Red Cross and Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and so forth. The number I recall from Andrew the dog handler in Iraq (quoted in IIRC Harpers) was "at least 90%" innocent, for example. That's the general range from almost all informed, independent eyewitnesses published, and Miles would have plenty of sources for it besides Deity.

What do you find improbable about the hypothesis that the US has the same uses for confessions - false and otherwise - that all torturing states have always had? You seem to be assuming that the US is not using these kinds of prisons and these kinds of practices for what every State to employ them has always used them. On what do you base such an unlikely assumption ?

Consider:

Notably, false confessions were obtained - and published, bragged, broadcast.