Doing the right thing?

[Red Line Entry]

Toadstool,

I am yet to see a single poster declare that they are more outraged with water boarding than they are at some lunatic cutting off a head.

You have now - I am more outraged at 'us' using torture than I am at 'them' cutting peoples' heads off.

I expect 'them' to be immoral murdering b'stards and I expect 'us' to be bound by the rule of law. Otherwise, if we're both ethically the same, then it really doesn't matter who wins.

[Finningley Boy]

Hear Hear Red Line,

Although if the torture involves some busty Army Girl tying up and tickling the detainee, then I'm going off to sign up for jihad straight away!

FB

Hope this isn't beyond the limit?

[Al R]

Sun Who,

Just once more, and re-phrased so as to be clear, I believe it was wrong for the CIA to use torture but I feel no less strongly about anyone elses use of torture. Both instances are legally and strategically ineffective.

By way of evidence, ISIS beheading have not furthered their strategic intent.

It might be argued that Abu Ghraib infamy didn't really undermine ours either? This is the sort of thread where 'less is more', but the horizons of strategic intent are variable of course. A friendly, or a firm friendly approach will nearly always produce long term reliability but sometimes, there isn't the luxury of that.

I offer absolutely no defence of torture but if I had loved ones going for a coffee in Sydney yesterday, I have to say, I'm glad I'm not in the shoes of those currently making the calls. I don't have the inclination to adopt the lofty high ground and I find it worrying that ignorant politicians use it as an opportunistic menu de la jour. I don't trust them in the first instance, and secondly, if we commit forces in defence of the country, it's an issue for the country to reconcile and evolve.

The solution and moral debate isn't as clear as it once was. Once more, I don't advocate torture (although I am lead to believe it can produce immediate results) but do sometimes we have to take 3 steps back to take 4 steps forward and suck up some horrific losses? In 2001, the scope and timeline of the long war wasn't as clearly defined as it is now and the world is a completely different place to the one where we subjected suspected Irish terrorists (and subsequently, proven innocent people) to white noise.

[ShotOne]

"opportunistic menu de jour.." Well put, Al. The trouble is, its not just ignorant politicians but wavering allies and, especially, our enemies who will use it as such. They have explicitly paralleled our behaviour, for instance with the orange jump suits they force their unfortunate victims to wear. On the other hand, I can't conceive any way in which torture will resolve Sydney's coffee shop incident although it's entirely likely to be used as justification for their next atrocity, whatever that may be.

[Al R]

On that specific point, and at the risk of drawing OP ire, the aussie response to that is looking magnificent. We fudge responsibility by introducing layer upon later of prevarication and hindsight review but it seems that over there, one or two seem to be grasping the nettle.

Australia hostage siege: Muslim leaders condemn 'criminal' act as IllRideWithYou trends worldwide - Australasia - World - The Independent

Thank you for the gentle Franglais nudge.

[Roadster280]

Can I turn this round?

Military conflict on the ground will produce prisoners. Some of those prisoners will have information vital to one's own war effort.

In the new world order, where "enhanced" interrogation techniques are off the table, how does one extract information from such high-value prisoners, if the prisoner is non-cooperative?

Is the view that these people must simply be left in peace to see out the war in captivity, if they won't play nicely when asked nicely?

[Hempy]

In the new world order, where "enhanced" interrogation techniques are off the table, how does one extract information from such high-value prisoners, if the prisoner is non-cooperative?

If the stories I read about the French Resistance are correct, I'll think you'll find that even the Gestapo discovered that if the prisoner is truly 'non-cooperative' even 'enhanced interrogation techniques' won't 'extract information'..

Jean Moulin

Soon enough, they learned that they had captured the head of the Resistance.

Little good it did them. In the Montluc fort in Lyons, on the day that the Gestapo agent handed him writing materials because torture had left him unable to speak, Jean Moulin sketched a caricature of his torturer. As for what followed, let us turn to the stark words of his sister:

“His part was played, and his ordeal began. Jeered at, savagely beaten, his head bleeding, his internal organs ruptured, he attained the limits of human suffering without betraying a single secret, he who knew everything.”

Let us be quite clear that, for the days in which he was still able to speak or write, the fate of the whole Resistance hung on the courage of this one man. As Mademoiselle Moulin put it, he knew everything.

[Lonewolf_50]

Hempy, this is a good illustration of a piss poor argument (on your part) and the sterling example of how one person can defy his captors. (Stockdale was another sterling example).

What you might wish to remember is that each person is a different case, and you don't know what he'll do or not do until he is tested. Hell, he probably didn't know what he was capable of until he met that test.

The above doesn't mean that one should go on a default mode of "try and see" with the abuse. Not hardly, the narrow view of believing that "push button pain produces info" (like a vending machine) has been shown to be a bad basic assumption. Yet it sometimes works. Therefore other considerations have to be added if one is to arrive at actual criteria to base such a decision on. Policy, image, risk, what we do and don't do, and why ... all of that factors in.

This post is to remind you that oversimplifying the assessment based on an example of heroic defiance is a careless use of the halo effect.

Put another way, not every soldier is Alvin York.

[Boudreaux Bob]

Hempy,

For the One or very few who did not divulge information....how many others did in fact break and give up valuable information? Were not most arrests due to Collaborators acting out of fear of arrest, torture, and death, most having been arrested themselves?

You do understand the Instruction given to SOE and Resistance Fighters was to hold out for 24-48 hours in order to allow for the rest of the Cell's Members to learn of the Capture and to be able to effect their escape and evasion plan. After that time period there was no real value to giving up some information to take the pressure of the one in custody as the others not in custody could be on their way to hiding places and take actions to elude capture.

[Hempy]

I'm not presenting that as an 'argument', piss poor or otherwise (although cheers for the erudite post about...nothing). I'm sure if you trolled the Gestapo or Stasi etc archives you could find thousands of examples where torture turned up trumps, but who is to say any of those examples were 'non-cooperative'?? The fact that they gave up information would suggest they were cooperative. Via coercion.

It doesn't work on everyone. If you are going to lower your moral stamding to condone torture, any rational person would hope at least that

a. you're certain that the person about to be tortured actually has information worth torturing him for; and

b. you're certain the torture will work.

Or maybe I'm just too 'left wing huggy fluffy'. Or just not American.

[melmothtw]

Yep, this is where dehumanizing your enemy leads you. It starts with regarding them as no more than 'rag-heads', which leads to taking trophy photos of dead enemy combatants, which then progresses to individual soldiers murdering wounded prisoners on the battlefield, or the sanctioned and systematic torturing of detainees.

They're all just different points along the same sorry wedge.

[Boudreaux Bob]

One thing we are sure of Hempy is nothing....facts, reality, logic, and anything else is going to sway you from your own view of things.

We can point out the rules our American POW's lived by during their long years of real torture, the kind that results in horrible pain and permanent injuries and in some cases death, but you would ignore that in your calculations of results of toruture.

You do know our guys were told to resist as long as possible and endure what they could....but only to the point they did not incur lasting injuries or wounds.

That made the Vietnamese work for everything they got, met with our Military Code of Conduct, and protected our guys from having to suffer permanent injuries.

Sadly, the Vietnamese were not briefed in on the Rules as they had their own and far too many of our guys suffered permanent harm due to the Torture they endured.

But none of this matters to you.

All you see is some abstract moral construct of your own making and nothing matters to you beyond trying to force your own views on everyone else.

So do carry on ...but don't think you are going hold sway with the arguments you are presenting as they just are no persuasive to anyone with reasonable views of the issues.

Given your methods or Colonel Allen West's methods....I will walk alongside the good Colonel any Day of the Week as he totes those Gas Cans through Hell.

[Hempy]

How did this guy get a job?


General Says Less Coercion of Captives Yields Better Data

[Chugalug2]

BB:-

All you see is some abstract moral construct of your own making and nothing matters to you beyond trying to force your own views on everyone else.

Well, wrong there on all counts old man. Hempy's "abstract moral construct" is not solely of his making but shared with many others, myself included. No-one is forcing anybody to do anything or not to do anything, save for the legal restraints pertaining and one's own sense of what is right and what is wrong. In the UK torture is against the law, both civil and military (or was in my day, but that was of course many years ago. Has it changed?).

As has been alluded to here already, there are many ways to skin a cat. The processes of secrecy, deception, and monitoring helped us to win WW2, rather than resorting to a policy of torture. It was the opposite for the enemy. We did things differently to them and prevailed. If torture is official US policy then I suggest that is another thing that divides us, as well as a common language.

You may well agree with others that the Brits outshine all others in hypocrisy. When the lid is finally levered off this particular can you will possibly be proved right. There has been a lot of that here lately, and no doubt much more to come. No-one here can assume a holier than thou stance about anything, but we need to get back to being ourselves rather than assuming the mores and customs of others, be they friend or foe.

[Romeo Oscar Golf]

Geoffrey Miller | The Center for Torture Accountability

Some "interesting" revelations here

For what its worth I don't think there is much evidence of "torture", but then again my definition is probably different to yours.
These are bad dirty times as indeed they have been for many years and bad dirty actions must be taken.
The so called "moral high ground" is a meaningless phrase which means a thousand different thingsa to a thousand different people. We do not have to defend it because it doesn't exist in the reaL world

Have a nice day.

[Boudreaux Bob]

Chug,

Tell me about the London Cage thing. When it gets brought up all we heard is the sound of Crickets. Why no outcry over that?

That is the kind of hypocrisy that I talk about.

Pretending the UK has no skeletons in the closet is ignoring reality.

You too have used coercive interrogation techniques....and did so during that War.

Did not German Agents not get the fine choice of cooperating or being shot?

Of course they did, and under the concept of the way Spies get handled during Wartime I don't have much problem with it and you should not either.

But when One argues morality and makes it a very strict black and white construct then you leave yourself no wiggle room do you.

So...until you first admit the London Cage (and others existed and coercive techniques were used) then I shall have to consider you refusing to engage in any kind of true intellectual debate about this.

That is my problem with those who wish to see it in a one way fashion....not because of the nationalities that are involved but just the fact that you refuse to accept that your own side participated in exactly the same kind of conduct.

I guess that shoe pinches when it is on the other foot.

[Chugalug2]

BB
That is indeed the type of hypocrisy that I speak of. Tell you about the London Cage? It seems to me it would be more appropriate for you to tell us. All I can garnish is from that pillar of truth (bit of a Brit in-joke there, sorry), the Daily Mail:-
How Britain tortured Nazi PoWs: The horrifying interrogation methods that belie our proud boast that we fought a clean war | Daily Mail Online
It seems that is what you refer to, or was there worse than that? Either way I can't see any possible justification for it. Most of the complaints seem to come from captured German War criminals where there was more than enough evidence to hang them anyway. I must admit though that one complainant was a German anti Nazi refugee who had some justification for doing so. On the whole though I would characterise most of it as unjustifiable rough handling rather than torture per se, but then that is the default position of all called upon to justify the mishandling of prisoners so I concede your point.
Those responsible should have been charged, but of course they weren't. Were they acting under orders or merely abusing the power over those that they sought to interrogate? Such treatment was counter productive in my view, what good did any of it do us? What good does it do us now rather than make more people hate us and plan their revenge?
You are right, the London Cage scandal apparently shows us to be hypocrites. So what? Time we learned to be different.

[KenV]

A few random points:

1. The claim that "enhanced interogation does not work" flies in the face of numerous agencies who got lots of useful and valuable information using those techniques over multiple decades of experience.

2. The claim that all "enhanced interogation" is by definition "torture" is absolute rubbish. If this were true the US government has been "torturing" its own soldiers for decades. I myself have been water boarded five times and subject to many other ""enhanced interogation" techniques numerous times. The people in this report who used these techniques honed those skills and refined the techniques on their fellow service people. Being on the receiving end of such techniques was VERY unpleasant, but I never considered it torture.

3. This "Senate Report" is all about politics and not about "justice" nor "morality". The "Senate" did not produce it, A bunch of Senators from ONE political party produced it and released it. It's completely one sided and filled with inaccuracies and even some outright falsehoods.

[Boudreaux Bob]

Fair enough, now we can start on an even basis for debating what should be done as we accept that probably every government and military at some point has done things probably most of us would wish they had not.

I am on record as saying I do not endorse Torture or EIT Techniques for interrogations as a routine matter of procedure. In a combat situation or a very highly time critical situation say in a Terrorism event.....would I condemn our side scaring the crap out of someone in an effort to gain immediately actionable intelligence...well probably not. Shoot them in the knee or something like that ....absolutely not. Do something to make the guy think I would....perhaps.

But once in custody and confronted with a Criminal prosecution scenario then one stays well within established procedures.

The question is what do you do if there are no plans for Criminal Prosecution and you hold someone that is a known threat or proven threat?

[KenV]

But once in custody and confronted with a Criminal prosecution scenario then one stays well within established procedures.

FYI, none of the "torture" victims were in any kind of "criminal prosecution scenario." That's exactly why they were at secret locations OUTside of US legal jurisdiction.