President Obama said Wednesday that he would fight to prevent the release of photographs documenting abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by United States military personnel, reversing his position on the issue after commanders warned that the images could set off a deadly backlash against American troops. (story)
we live in a beautiful world ... guantanamos and illegal combatants and waterboardings and renditions and so on ... but is torture - or as the cia calls it "enhanced interrogation techniques" - absolutely wrong ... or is it justified in some cases ... like if the guy knew where the bomb was and he wasn't talking and it was going to go off in an hour and if it did hundreds will perish ... then is it ok to torture him ... i mean is that like a good torture ... as opposed to say an abu ghraib which was a bad torture ... i mean that was just for fun wasn't it ...
and if torture is allowed in some conditions ... then the question becomes are there any rules to torture ... war has rules ... so why not torture ... how much is too much ... is there such a thing as too much ... or do the ends always justify the means ...
8 comments:
in a related story ..
Those who attend religious services at least once a week were more likely than those who rarely or never attend to say torture is sometimes or often justified in that scenario — 54 percent to 42 percent,” the AP notes.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/13/ap-many-christian-right-leaders-stay-silent-on-torture/
There are rules to torture!! There are techniques and instructions and even books about it. That is how inhumane humans are.
What do you think?? should there be some cases where torture is allowed?
welllll i dont know .. im tempted to say its justified in some cases .. however im uncomfortable with that because once you say its allowed then you are opening a big can of worms u know .. cuz then its like where do u draw the line .. who gets to draw the line .. and on and on ..
having said that .. there needs to be a damn good reason if u want me to condone it .. and even then it would have to be somewhat mild techniques like sleep deprivation or loud music or stuff like that .. not like putting cigarettes out in the dude's forehead ..
How about a man who abducts, molests,tortures then murders little children and refuses to confess the whereabouts of their bodies?? That was a case in Canada long ago and of course not only was the guy NOT tortured, his wife got a deal just to guide the police to the bodies. Now that is what I call "civilization".
I cannot condone torture, not for any reason, not even for the sake of saving millions of lives..it's just not ok! But then perhaps that is why I will never be in a position to make such calls. Thank God.
ok then how about strong-arm tactics .. do u think those qualify as torture??
for example .. arresting the guy's wife to compel him to turn himself in ..
re: the canada story .. well yeah the west is civilized when it comes to their own .. they have no problem with torturing us though ..
here is an excerpt from an article that describes some of the tactics used by the bush administration and continue to happen under the obama administration ..
"blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated … through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.
gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner's head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them -- sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end.
http://www.alternet.org/story/140022/
They do not qualify as torture per se but they are unethical and unacceptable. And like you said such practices are only permitted against us, their citizens, including the wives of murderes and "terrorists", have rights.
I have seen a movie, which was really a documentary, about the American invasion of Iraq. The soldiers spoke of incidents which made me gasp with horror and scream with rage. Once they got a "very dangerous" prisoner who's in the "higher ranks of al qaeda". They tortured the poor fellow and left him hanging by his hands from a tree for three days. His hand got gangrenous and had to be cut off. Later, they found out that he had no connection to al qaeda and that they'd made a mistake!!
When there is no regard for human rights and no concrete laws to protect those rights then torture becomes routine. I asked myself how could this happen..but it is apparently easy to dehumanize another human being.
It's just so awful and depressing that such a thing as "torture" exists, let alone being legalized and adopted as an acceptable method of interrogation.
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