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Originally Posted by kurtz
Well, so long as they only do it to the baddies  |
Well, that is the crossroads here. some month ago there was a poll on torture and wether it is accepted or not. there I said in principle the same like you: that I could imagine it to be used on the baddies. Well, actually, I put it much more strictly and said: in some very special, extremely tightly defined cases, if there is a public awareness for it, and a consensus of society, and any trustworthy countercontrol to monitor the use and report any abuse of it. For eventually, for some exceptionel reason, you may want such "baddies" telling what they klnow in order to save an innocent's life, but their "badnes" and the rules by which torture would be accepted being defined as tight and precsie as possible, and you do not want tax fraud falling under this definition, or bank robbery, etc. . This is my main argument against torture: it is almost impossible in today's societies and states to make sure that such strict situational contexts in which it eventually may be used - read it: eventually - are obeyed. In case of the bush adminsitration, there is no trustworthiness and credibility left, and like guantanamo imprisonment, the legal rules and civil countercontrol of proceedings are bypassed. It is beyond control, and people are left to believe and what they hope. That simply is not good enough.
You say it is okay if it only the baddies getting it. the point is you do not lknow if it really is only baddies getting it whose badness jusrtifies the means - and not suspects as well. and there have been quite a prominent number of suspects being detained in Guantanamo now - who later has been released for after two years or so if came out they got the wrong one. You do not want the wrong suspect become exposed to torture - and this is a very big problem. Thus I insist on using torture only extremely rarely, if the context is beyond any doubt, and better: don't use it at all.
I doubt that such self-restraint exists in a government as stupid and lying and criminal as the bush adminstration. I doubt there is any government in the West being that reasonable, and in control. therefore: don't touch torture at all.
the second problem I have is that the bush administration is so shamelessly and hypocritically lying about torture, legitimizing torture and by just exchanging a single label tries to tell people that they are not torturing at all. Obviously they consider the people to be braindead and completely dumb and idiotic. At the same time these lying hypocrites keep on babbling about morals and ethical values and how morally superior they are, while when mikes are switched off they all kick their claims with boots and throw the seriousness of their claims into the garbage bin. and that is not what America wants to stand for by it's once valid ideals of the past. It should hold itself in higher self-respect.
The minimizing and downplaying of drowning torture, as being practiced by some, is just this: sick, showing a deeply disturbed mind. If it really were so harmless, I wonder why subjects exposed to this torture are said to be so desparately willing to cooperate and tell everything the interrogators want to hear.
I once have been shown a film on the French resistance drowning a german during interogation. That was no acting, that was real. If you think the amnesty video is hard, you better wake up. the reality is much more brutal and grim. I also was engaged in therapeutical treatment of torture victims from the Balkan wars, only some months, but that was enough to teach me what torture does, especially if it is not used for interrogation, but for individual destruction and collective intimidation. People taking questions of torture lightly and minimizing it and dealing with it only by stupid catch-phrases and easy jokes, earn only one thing from me: fullheartly given my utmost contempt. Amnesty made this film, and what you see is play-acting only. I just wish they would show footage from a real session - to open people's eyes what they allow to be done in the name of their people. Becasue if only they knew, their is a higher chance that they would not allow these things to be continued.