'Torture' saved British lives...

Originally Posted by RizzyKing

Maggy as someone married to an ex forces server you know damn well i wouldn't mention even if i could and you know why as well . Daniel you can continue to believe if you like that it never yields reliable information but again answer me this if it never does why has the practice continued for so long. Torture in media terms is very simplistic waterboarding is the favourite thing for them to pick up on but in the terms of the field that is a crude completely unreliable way of obtaining information and thats why americans love it.

Because they don't care so much about real information more that they can report anything as real information obtained from someone they regard as an enemy. Bit like the vietnam war and their body counts which were so massively exaggeratted i cannot remeber who it was but someone added them all up and if they were true there would have been hardly anyone left in north vietnam. This is a complicated field that has many approaches some of them subtle and effective others not so subtle and effective. But the people involved are trained believe it or not to spot information that is genuine from information that is being given to stop whatever procedure is happening at the time. Add to that the vast vast majority of prisoners\captives will never be subjected to any form whatsoever and it is hardly a widespread popular practice.

My husband believes as I do,that torture can never be right..Just because the fact that people will say anything about anyone and anything just to make torture stop.It's unreliable.

If waterboarding was so effective, why was it only used three times? - Bush

Mohammed was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding, alongside Saudi Arabia-born Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by RizzyKing

Show me where i have said george bush is reliable or that i believe what he says on this matter

I didn't say you did say or believe he was reliable. However your assertion " those that have had to do it in the past and will be doing it in the present and future for the security of this country don't expect thank you's or credit" Certainly suggests (very clearly) that you believe what he says on the matter as far as this particular context is concerned.

Originally Posted by RizzyKing

Also there is a difference between field interrogations and intelligence interrogations those in basra falling firmly into the field area.

I think you'll find that rendition (extraordinary or otherwise), together with the deployment of intelligence officers in the field, put an end to any such distinction quite some time ago.

[Hom3r]

Without some "unethical" things being done, a lot of lives will be saved.

Look at Burke and Hare, if they hadn't had done what they did, the medicine wouldn't have been as good as it is to day.

[Tezcatlipoca]

"Waterboarding is torture, Downing Street confirms"

Originally Posted by The Grauniad

Downing Street today dismissed George Bush's claim that waterboarding is not torture after the former president used his memoirs to play down the brutality of the interrogation technique and claimed that it saved British lives.

Waterboarding, which was banned by President Barack Obama, helped foil attacks on Heathrow airport, Canary Wharf and a number of US targets around the world, according to Bush.

In Decision Points, published today, Bush insists the practice – which simulates drowning – is not torture, describing it instead as one of a number of "enhanced interrogation techniques".

But Downing Street confirmed the British government still shared Obama's opinion that waterboarding constitutes torture. "It comes under that definition in our view," a No 10 spokeswoman said.

The former chair of the Commons intelligence and security committee, Kim Howells, cast doubt on Bush's claim that it had helped save British lives. "We are not convinced," said the Labour MP.

(snip)

The claim that waterboarding prevented London attacks was challenged by Howells, . He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that there had been and still were "real plots", but added that "we're not convinced" that waterboarding produced information which was "instrumental in preventing these plots coming to fruition and murdering people".

Howells said Bush was trying to "justify what he did to the world", a viewpoint echoed by the former shadow home secretary David Davis.

Davis told Today that although security information provided from abroad would have to be used regardless of how it was obtained, torture did not work and should be discouraged.

"People under torture tell you what you want to hear," he said. "You'll get the wrong information and ... apart from being immoral, apart from destroying our standing in the world, and apart from undermining the way of life we're trying to defend, it actually doesn't deliver."

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by Hom3r

Without some "unethical" thing being done, a lot of lives will be saved.

Look at Burke and Hare, if they hadn't had done what they did, the medicine wouldn't have been as good as it is to day.

Consequently their actions also brought about criticism of the then Government's complicity whereby the Lancet journal announced "Government is already in a great degree, responsible for the crime which it has fostered by its negligence, and even encouraged by a system of forbearance".

The analogy you present is too similar in that those charged with the ethical guardianship of the sanctity of life have, in both circumstances, criticised actions which undermined their very own integrity.

Not something to be either proud or tolerant of.

As Rizzyking said earlier ,torture takes many forms ,from physical to mental and i would say that waterboarding falls mainly into the mental catorgory ,although i accept there is a physical aspect it is mainly mental torture.The dilemma facing governments is what is an acceptible method of extracting information ,does the interogator ask politely or does he scream and shout or does he employ methods such as waterboarding which although distastful and illegal in this country is deemed acceptible in the US and will yield results in some cases ,because as has always been said torture is unreliable which by definition means it works some times

[Osem]

Originally Posted by danielf

Because killing is par for the course for war, and civilian casualties can't (always) be avoided. Torture is completely avoidable, and we signed up to treaties banning it.

It's a bit like it's OK to eat animals but not to impart unnecessary cruelty on them. You could argue that an animal is better of being subjected to cruelty than being slaughtered, yet the cruelty against animals is illegal and slaughtering/eating them isn't.

I know about the treaties, the question is why have we signed treaties making torture illegal whilst we reserve the right to kill other people and let's not pretend that the consequences of bombing can be controlled, aren't terrible and don't often amount to torture for those affected. There are always alternatives to any military action - the choices made more usually depend more upon such things as equipment, manpower and political will than a desire to minmise all risk to the innocent.

In conflict situations (military and otherwise) we justify all sorts of things on the basis that the risk of not taking that action far outweighs the likely consequences of it. Are we really saying that there no circumstances whatsoever in which, in order to prevent carnage, torturing suspects for information is justified? If so, then I can understand why torture has been made illegal. However I have a feeling that all the illegality in the world wouldn't prevent us using such methods if the stakes were high enough.

I'm not questioning the worthy aims behind making torture illegal as much as I am the contradictions apparent in making that argument.

Originally Posted by danielf

Torture is completely avoidable, and we signed up to treaties banning it.
.

You are of course correct ,we have signed treaties banning torture but can anyone give a clear ,consise definition of what actions during interogation are defined as torture ,what is the line when interrogation stops and it becomes torture ?

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by martyh

You are of course correct ,we have signed treaties banning torture but can anyone give a clear ,consise definition of what actions during interogation are defined as torture ,what is the line when interrogation stops and it becomes torture ?

From here:

..any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions. —UN Convention Against Torture[1]

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

From here:

..any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions. —UN Convention Against Torture[1]

so it's wide open to interpretation then ,and that's the main issue here i think .Bush obviously thinks waterboarding is acceptable because it doesn't cause severe pain ,HMG on the other hand doesn't think it is acceptable because it causes mental distress .The other issue i see is that if a government is prepared to see waterboarding as acceptable what other forms of interrogation do they see as acceptable and how far are they willing to bend the spirit of the treaties they have signed

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by martyh

so it's wide open to interpretation then ,and that's the main issue here i think .Bush obviously thinks waterboarding is acceptable because it doesn't cause severe pain ,HMG on the other hand doesn't think it is acceptable because it causes mental distress .The other issue i see is that if a government is prepared to see waterboarding as acceptable what other forms of interrogation do they see as acceptable and how far are they willing to bend the spirit of the treaties they have signed

No it (torture) is not wide open to interpretation. It is very clearly defined.

You obviously haven't read either anything by a medical professional on the matter of waterboarding or any of the accounts which contradict Bush's assertions on this matter.

HMGs position, as quoted today, is that they consider waterboarding to be torture - plain and simple. They do not labour the semantics or split hairs as you seem to be attempting to do.

Here is another informative tract:

But since shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks there has been a debate in the United States about whether torture is justified in some circumstances. Some people, such as Alan M. Dershowitz and Mirko Bagaric, have argued the need for information outweighs the moral and ethical arguments against torture.[55][56] However, after coercive practices were banned, interrogators in Iraq saw an increase of 50 percent more high-value intelligence. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the American commander in charge of detentions and interrogations, stated "a rapport-based interrogation that recognizes respect and dignity, and having very well-trained interrogators, is the basis by which you develop intelligence rapidly and increase the validity of that intelligence."[57] Others including Robert Mueller, FBI Director since July 5, 2001, have pointed out that despite former Bush Administration claims that waterboarding has "disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks", they do not believe that evidence gained by the U.S. government through what supporters of the techniques call "enhanced interrogation" has disrupted a single attack and no one has come up with a documented example of lives saved thanks to these techniques.[58][59] On June 19, 2009, the US government announced that it was delaying the scheduled release of declassified portions of a report by the CIA Inspector General that reportedly cast doubt on the effectiveness of the "enhanced interrogation" techniques employed by CIA interrogators, according to references to the report contained in several Bush-era Justice Department memos declassified in the Spring of 2009 by the US Justice Department.[60][61][62]

As to "how far" certain countries are prepared to bend the spirit of treaties they have signed I'm afraid that until such time as countries are brought to book for doing so you may as well ask "how long is a piece of string".

---------- Post added at 22:06 ---------- Previous post was at 21:48 ----------

Originally Posted by Osem

However I have a feeling that all the illegality in the world wouldn't prevent us using such methods if the stakes were high enough.

The various ongoing cases alleging torture by or on behalf of British intelligence would suggest you are absoulutely right to suspect as much.

[QUOTE=Mr Angry;35120052]No it (torture) is not wide open to interpretation. It is very clearly defined.

You obviously haven't read either anything by a medical professional on the matter of waterboarding or any of the accounts which contradict Bush's assertions on this matter.

HMGs position, as quoted today, is that they consider waterboarding to be torture - plain and simple. They do not labour the semantics or split hairs as you seem to be attempting to do.
QUOTE]

...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental

well that bit there seems vague ,what would be severe to some is not severe to others.

if you read my post i stated that there is a physical aspect to waterboarding (meaning physical pain perhaps i should have been clearer)but i stand by the fact that the psychological issues can last far longer than the physical pain

I am aware of HMG's position and fully agree with their stance ,the point i am trying to make is that not all governments will see some forms of interogation as torture as we do simply because the definition can be seen as ambiguous and in some cases open to interpretation .

[danielf]

Originally Posted by martyh

well that bit there seems vague ,what would be severe to some is not severe to others.

if you read my post i stated that there is a physical aspect to waterboarding (meaning physical pain perhaps i should have been clearer)but i stand by the fact that the psychological issues can last far longer than the physical pain

I am aware of HMG's position and fully agree with their stance ,the point i am trying to make is that not all governments will see some forms of interogation as torture as we do simply because the definition can be seen as ambiguous and in some cases open to interpretation .

The fact that the Bush administration felt the need to invent a euphemism like enhanced interrogation techniques, speaks volumes in my opinion.

Originally Posted by martyh

As Rizzyking said earlier ,torture takes many forms ,from physical to mental and i would say that waterboarding falls mainly into the mental catorgory ,although i accept there is a physical aspect it is mainly mental torture.The dilemma facing governments is what is an acceptible method of extracting information ,does the interogator ask politely or does he scream and shout or does he employ methods such as waterboarding which although distastful and illegal in this country is deemed acceptible in the US and will yield results in some cases ,because as has always been said torture is unreliable which by definition means it works some times

Erm, no.

The USA tried and hanged Japanese soldiers who carried out waterboarding during the Second World War - John McCain


Also, in the US of A, it's banned by domestic law link

In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

and international treaties, but those policies don't cover CIA personnel - the advice GWB was given was the advice he wanted - link

"Tom Kean, who was a former Republican co-chair of the 9/11 commission, said they got legal opinions they wanted from their own people."

GWB signed an Executive Order in 2007 which exempted the CIA from the same rules as the US Armed Forces and US Civilians - it it wasn't illegal, why wasn't it illegal for all of them?