This is why we need The Hague...

[liz_marcs]

via SadlyNo

The thing about torture is simple: It. Does. Not. Work.

Ever.

If you want to lord it over a POW, if you're getting off on the power you have over people's lives, if you want someone to tell you something you want to hear, then, yes, torture works.

If you want the truth? Not so much.

I see the debate in this country over

Comments

[a2zmom]

I am just so ill from this.

Do you have any suggestions on what I can do to protest this?

[liz_marcs]

A lot of it, unfortunately, depends on whether your Congressional delegation agrees with you on the issue of torture. In my case happily, my Congressional delegation by-and-large does (All Hail the People's Republic of Massachusetts!). The bad news is that because my Rep and my Senators do agree with me, I can't actually influence a vote in Congress because I've already got the votes (so to speak). Someone outside my district sure as hell won't listen to me because they can't gain or lose my vote.

The only thing you can do is not vote for anyone in federal office that supports the use of torture, make some noise in public (be it protesting or helping with online organizing), and join an organization opposed to torture. Some support Amnesty International, others the Human Rights Campaign, I support the ACLU (I even have a card!).

If you read below, ginmar talks about her time in Iraq where she debriefed people picked up by American troops and how they weren't listened to when they would insist that someone who was picked up didn't know

[firefly124]

No, it was my high school too. It amazes me that torture is even remotely considered not just for humanitarian reasons but because, as you and those you've quoted point out, it doesn't fucking work.

And even if you discount both the humanitarian and "it doesn't work" arguments against it, the question remains whether we could possibly learn anything that would be worth the number of additional enemies we create every time we decide it's okay to use "enhanced interrogation techniques."

This country is fast turning into the bogeyman that the USSR was considered when I was a kid, the place where you can be picked up for the slightest hint of a rumor that maybe you might be involved in something or other and tortured until you admit it, true or not.

[liz_marcs]

You have nailed my big fear right on the head.

It makes you wonder just small of a step it is from using torture on designated enemy combatants (whether they're American citizens or not) to using torture on regular citizens to don't fit "the norms."

[ginmar]

I was an interrogator in Iraq. The number one approach that softened somebody up was, "Hey, dude, you want a cigarette?"

Torture works in one way and that's to gratify the torturer. That's all. After I'd been in Iraq a few months, I burned up my interogation notebook from the school house. It was absolutely useless. In a hot war like this, you need more humanity toward the enemy rather than less. Let them think you're weak, whatever; there are no Jack Bauer ticking time bomb scenarios in real life. Period.

[liz_marcs]

Which has been echoed by just about every military interrogator with a smidge of training going back to (as you can see) World War II. So you're definitely in good company...like your personal experience in Iraq shouldn't be good enough, right? Which it completely should be. :-)

What boggles my mind is how people who actually support things like "enhanced interrogation techniques" seem to think that the definition of torture depends on who's doing it. If we do it, it's "the good guys trying to get the bad guys to talk truth to the power." If it's someone else we've deemed the target of our daily 10-minutes of hate, it's "torture."

Plus, as you well know, everyone picked up by American forces as engage in terrorist acts is de facto guilty. Because American soldiers do not get faulty intel nor do they ever make mistakes under high-pressure war-time conditions. Under no circumstances is an innocent person accidentally swept up. [/sarcasm

[ginmar]

I have you friended; you can certainly see over the past few days how the general run of my beliefs--torture is inhumane, women are human beings, etc., etc., -----has resulted in death threats, insults, and attempts at real life stalking---from some of the sort of people who see torture as just one more dominance game. That's what it's about, not information. And I have to add, too, that let's face it----when you're dealing with people who are scared already, shutting them up is the problem, not softening them up. The Iraqis were so glad to be rid of Saddam--I'll never forget that. And then we turned out to be him all over again.

Oh, God, faulty intel----if there's two any bitterer words in the English language I don't know what they are. We had people turning in their neighbors for old grudges. We had one guy whom we rewarded for accurate information get targeted by jealous neighbors. I had the soul-crushing experience of interrogating a guy I knew was innocent, and over my objections and that of my whole chain he was still

[liz_marcs]

That is horrifying.

As for people targeting you *shakes head* I still remain amazed. The reaction some people have about what you say seems just so out of balance. It's like they're reacting to something that you didn't even write half-the-time.

I admit I don't agree with you all the time (although I agree with you far more often than not), but you always at least give me something to think about it.

As for your issues with the VA *winces* I've got a cousin who runs a homeless vets shelter in central MA (he's said that the number of women homeless vets are skyrocketing like you wouldn't believe...and that almost all of them from Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and Iraq) and that trying to get funding or support from the Feds is like pulling teeth out of a chicken most of the time.

So it's not just you(TM), the widespread neglect of veterans really is getting worse and it's across the board. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

[lynnenne]

I'm with you. The very idea just makes me sick. In Canada, we've found a handy way around the problem: we turn our citizens over to U.S. authorities, and let them deport them to countries which allow torture. The whole of North America is complicit in this barbarism. I am ashamed of us.

*writes cheque to Amnesty International*

[liz_marcs]

Jesus wept. I knew Australia was playing footsie with the U.S. on crap like this, but Canada?

It just doesn't seem to end. It's like dominoes.

[alainn_mactire]

I can honestly say that few, if any UK schools covered this type of thing (though this may have changed in the 10 years since I graduated college).

Most history when I was growing up focused on the politics and results, rather than the actual detail. Admittedly, I attended a very closeted Catholic school...

Personally I'm disgusted with the whole idea of torture.

Electric shock to the genitals? Taking a pregnant woman and electrocuting the fetus inside her? Executing a captive’s children in front of him? Dropping live people from an airplane over the ocean? It has all been done by governments seeking information.

Makes me ashamed to belong to the human race sometimes, it really does.

[liz_marcs]

You and me both.

[mandragora1]

Here from friendsfriends (I think! *g