With my son due to start his training any time now, this sort of thing has a personal concern for me as well as my concern as a reasonably patriotic citizen. I think this administration has been watching too many reruns of NYPD Blue.
With centuries of evidence that torture gains no useful information and brutalizes victim and interrogators both, just how stupid are they? And frankly, even if such measures were 100% reliable, they are wrong. Simply, morally wrong. I don't want my life or my son's life being saved by such means. These are not the tools of democracy. Evil means corrupt the ends achieved and these are evil means.
What I want to know is, where are the Christian leaders? The religious right is supposed to be behind Bush and Company. Have any of them read the Gospels? DO they ever seriously ask themselves, "What Would Jesus Do?" Have they read John 18:10-11?
Sorry, but the thought that they do this shit in my behalf makes me sick. That they might ask my son to do it makes me furious.
One problem I continue to see is that the definition of "torture" seems to be a sliding scale. Bukovsky writes:
...but I do know that if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.
But he doesn't care to draw the line between CID and non-CID. He cites a number of excesses, such as non-stop interrogations lasting ten days, but declines to comment on how long a period of interrogation is OK. He describes his experience with having a too-large feeding tube forced in when he was on a hunger strike, but doesn't address the case of a properly-designed feeding tube, competently inserted. (Was Fred Patten, Loscon's fan guest of honor this year, undergoing torture when a stroke left him temporarily unable to swallow?)
The hysterical left is wringing its collective hands over abuse at Abu Ghraib. Prisoners were paraded around naked. But is a strip-search and cavity search any less degrading? Why not carefully interrogate each prisoner, using Karney-approved methods, working to gain their trust and cooperation until they reveal whether or not they're carrying contraband. Seems to me, the degrading searches are nothing more than a degrading shortcut method, of the type described in Bukovsky's article.
I have an "adopted nephew" who's staying at my house because he can't stay at his own house while his sister's there. He's been charged with raping her. When a social worker interviewed her, her story fell to pieces and she admitted to making it all up. But when the police interviewed him, after hours of being told he could go home if he just told the police what they wanted to know, he confessed. This confession is the only evidence the police have against him, or even that a crime occurred at all.
Was he tortured?
Will those who consider this torture put their money and their energy where their typing fingers are and contribute to his defense? His next hearing is Tuesday.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 10:51 am (UTC)With centuries of evidence that torture gains no useful information and brutalizes victim and interrogators both, just how stupid are they? And frankly, even if such measures were 100% reliable, they are wrong. Simply, morally wrong. I don't want my life or my son's life being saved by such means. These are not the tools of democracy. Evil means corrupt the ends achieved and these are evil means.
What I want to know is, where are the Christian leaders? The religious right is supposed to be behind Bush and Company. Have any of them read the Gospels? DO they ever seriously ask themselves, "What Would Jesus Do?" Have they read John 18:10-11?
Sorry, but the thought that they do this shit in my behalf makes me sick. That they might ask my son to do it makes me furious.
Torture
Date: 2006-09-23 03:57 pm (UTC)Pity it won't do any good.
B
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 05:55 pm (UTC)But he doesn't care to draw the line between CID and non-CID. He cites a number of excesses, such as non-stop interrogations lasting ten days, but declines to comment on how long a period of interrogation is OK. He describes his experience with having a too-large feeding tube forced in when he was on a hunger strike, but doesn't address the case of a properly-designed feeding tube, competently inserted. (Was Fred Patten, Loscon's fan guest of honor this year, undergoing torture when a stroke left him temporarily unable to swallow?)
The hysterical left is wringing its collective hands over abuse at Abu Ghraib. Prisoners were paraded around naked. But is a strip-search and cavity search any less degrading? Why not carefully interrogate each prisoner, using Karney-approved methods, working to gain their trust and cooperation until they reveal whether or not they're carrying contraband. Seems to me, the degrading searches are nothing more than a degrading shortcut method, of the type described in Bukovsky's article.
I have an "adopted nephew" who's staying at my house because he can't stay at his own house while his sister's there. He's been charged with raping her. When a social worker interviewed her, her story fell to pieces and she admitted to making it all up. But when the police interviewed him, after hours of being told he could go home if he just told the police what they wanted to know, he confessed. This confession is the only evidence the police have against him, or even that a crime occurred at all.
Was he tortured?
Will those who consider this torture put their money and their energy where their typing fingers are and contribute to his defense? His next hearing is Tuesday.