Quote:
Originally Posted by Slims
What?
Dude, there is no moral relativism involved. It's a legal issue and only a legal issue. Torture is, by definition extremely painful (or it wouldn't be torture). The methods listed in that memo just dont' fit that bill. If detainees were actually being tortured beyond the treatment authorized then that is another issue. As for the number of detainees who have 'died' in custody, remember that many of them were already sick or wounded before they were picked up and are often on their way out the door already. Several times we almost had a detainee die on us....In particular one from congestive heart failure, another due to a massive hernia, and a third who was gut-shot. In each instance we were more worried about their health and how it would be perceived politically if a detainee died in our custody than we were in the intelligence they could provide.
Some of those detainees who were "Tortured" were the primary producers of Intel on Al-Qaeda for quite some time. Those tactics were employed BECAUSE they were effective and were constantly refined and re-verified. I have seen how well some of them can work when properly applied.
I can understand the argument that it wasn't right and shouldn't have been done I disagree, but it is absolutely a legitimate argument. I can even understand an argument saying the tactics should have been interpreted as illegal. What I don't understand is an argument which circumvents the issue by either pointing at people who were actually tortured (illegally) and/or misrepresents the effectiveness of the methods employed with absolutely no first hand (or even second or third) information whatsoever and no data (because none has been released, intelligence being one of those 'secret' type things) to support your claim.
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Torture is not by definition "extremely painful." It can just as easily be about mental anguish, like with sleep deprivation, extended sensory deprivation, fake executions.
And the legal "rationale" used to approve these techniques is extremely weak, as anyone who has read them knows.
And the argument that only someone who has immediate knowledge of these situations can discuss them is total Bullshit with a capital B, and circular to boot. "We can torture because we know what we learned, but I can't tell you, so we will keep doing without anyone's interference."
But in any case, there have been numerous memos released about how people were actually saying that their ability to gather intelligence had been compromised due to the mental state of the detainee.
And in any case, just look at the numbers of people release and deemed not of interest after undergoing such treatment. So we know several innocent people were tortured, and yet this is all ok?