The US Senate has passed the anti-torture version of the Defense Appropriations bill, but the House of Representatives needs a little encouragement to leave the anti-torture language intact:
Both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives have passed different versions of the Defense Appropriations bill this year. When the Senate took up the Defense Appropriations bill last month, it first voted 90-9 to include the McCain-Graham-Warner Anti-Torture Amendment. This important amendment represents a good step forward to bring U.S. interrogation practices in line with core principals of U.S. and international law. The House had passed a different version of the Defense Appropriations bill earlier this year, but had not included such an Anti-Torture Amendment.
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there are a lot of things that go on “behind the scenes” in every country’s counter-intelligence department. passing a bill like this takes away one more weapon that the cia, military intelligence and homeland security have at their disposal.
if you have a child, imagine this scenario:
two people kidnap your child. one of the perps is apprehended, but refuses to give the location of your child. how far would you want the police to go in getting the information from the perp?
do you think the bad guys of the world are going to play by the same rules? will america having a no torture policy really make the world a better place?
Well, turn it around. Imagine you have a child who is a teenager or young adult now. The CIA detains and tortures him, though he and you maintain that he is innocent of the charges against him. I don’t think anyone would want that, and it’s a lot more likely than the “my child will certainly die unless someone gets tortured” scenario. Every tortured suspect is someone’s child.
Yes, I think it will make the world a better place, because having a clear policy against torture will give America’s enemies one less reason to hate us, and it will give us more credibility in the eyes of other democracies.
I think this is similar to the “and you are lynching negroes” scenario of the Cold War. Torturing those who have not been convicted of any crime puts us on par with Saddam and others we oppose.
I’d be interested to hear the counter-argument here, assuming it’s something other than a worst-case scenario concocted to inspire fear.
I agree with Justin - and can we please dispense with the worst-case-scenario examples to drive legislature? And the object of violence is always referred to as a child or an innocent. I don’t wish to live in a country where laws are based on such deliberations.
I’m still dewy-eyed enough to hope that most of our common societal decisions are based on principles of honesty, integrity and dignity for all humans (yes, all of them) and protection for those in our power.
Cerise
Here is a genuine event that can be easily verified with a search engine, and which I remember hearing about when it happened.
In April of 2004, a group of terrorists planned a deadly gas bomb attack which if carried out would have killed about 20,000 people in Amman, Jordan. Somehow the plot was discovered and the terrorists were arrested.
So, this stuff does really happen. What do you do when you capture someone involved in a plot to kill hundreds, thousands, or more?
You’re saying that they tortured the bloke they caught and that was how it all ended so nicely?
Here’s the thing for me - I can’t see how torture can ever be contenanced by a country that claims to value human rights - period. Another thing I believe (this may sound rather cold and I’m sorry) is that if groups of clever people want to kill in large numbers no number of defensive methods will stop them forever. Which means for me that torture, among other things, is not only morally reprehensible but inevitably futile, especially in the big picture.
I don’t have kids, but I have people I love enough to die for. I also value the life of ‘the innocents’ very, very much. But I would torture no one for any of them. I hope.
Cerise
Yeah, I don’t see torture being the clear hero in this case, either. We don’t know that torture was used, or that it was even helpful in breaking the case if it was used.
And I don’t think Jordan is the best country from which to take our cues on human rights. I would not want to set foot in a Jordanian prison as a visitor; I cannot imagine what it must be like as a suspected terrorist.
Another major reason the US cannot support torture is that it violates the principle of presumed innocence. I doubt the CIA is going to wait for a conviction to use torture, which means they’d be torturing people whom they would not even be permitted to detain them for more than 24 hours in the US.
The loopholes are scary, and used in racist ways. I bet I could count the number of white people tortured or illegally detained by the CIA on one hand. Yet the number of people of other ethnicities detained at Guantanamo and who knows where else numbers in the thousands. Held without charge. The very least we need to do is assure the world that we will not torture them (though the detainment is another issue worth getting upset about separately).
Let’s try again, and please try not to be so reactionary.
I didn’t write anything about torture pro or con. I stated a historical fact that proves that one doesn’t need to invent doomsday scenarios for the sake of discussion. One near-doomsday has almost happened, and perhaps more that haven’t been made public.
I want an answer to a simple question: What do you do when you capture someone involved in a plot to kill hundreds, thousands, or more?
What exactly is your plan of action in this situation?
OK, I can work with that. If we discover someone who appears to be involved in a terrorist plot, we interrogate them and put them on trial. It’s what we do in this country. It may not be as effective as the rack, but it’s how democracies are supposed to operate.
We may not like “innocent until proven guilty” in cases like this, but if it protects us, we must allow it to protect those accused of terrorist activities.
OK, but the plot in my scenario is still in progress.
So, how do we…
1. Find the bomb, and
2. Save the 20,000 innocent people from dying.
I think the procedure is basically the same as when torture is allowed, except you leave out the torture. You interrogate the suspect, question their families and associates, and find out as much as you can. But they still have to be treated as a suspect, and protected under the law. We’d want the same for ourselves.
Going back to something I said in the previous post on torture, I’m not universally opposed to the use of torture in principle. If there were a situation where torture could be used on a murderous person to get information that would with certainty save many other lives, I’d be OK with that. It’s the “good of one” vs. the “good of many” argument, which is pretty easy to resolve. When it’s evil bad guy vs. your kids, the choice is clear.
But the real world of intelligence, politics, and terrorism is far more complicated. Who do you torture? When? How do you do it? When should you just interrogate them? How long should you hold them? Should you use the information they provide to take out other suspected-but-not-convicted terrorists? I do not trust our government to use such a power justly. Innocent people would be tortured with no benefit to the safety of others, and the rule of law would be circumvented in an ever-increasing number of supposedly exceptional cases.
with the acknowledgement that the world of intelligence is complicated, i think it is safe to say that the CIA is likely to continue operating in the exact same manner they currently operate. i’m not saying it is right that they operate above the law, but i’m comfortable w/ them doing what it takes “behind-the-scenes” to do their incredibly difficult jobs.
so, ignore my first comment. pass the law if it makes joe and jane citizen feel better about their country. just don’t be surprised if (when) someone eventually complains about being tortured by the cia. and don’t be surprised when the official line from the cia is that it was a “rogue” agent… but i’m okay w/ that.
Well, there you go. It’s a difficult issue and we live in an imperfect world with imperfect people making decisions.
One of the more subtle effects of terrorism is that the terrorized society is faced with the choice of dying in random horrible ways or becoming more brutal itself to keep this from happening.
In the last few years this “Christian” has done more of promoting “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” than the message of Jesus, “if someone strikes you in the face, offer them the other cheek”.
Since their creation, Military Intelligence agencies have been oxymoronic in theory and practice.
We like to picture ourselves as the “guys in the white cowboy hats”.
But our government decided Japanese-Americans were a threat in WW2 and put them in concentration camps.
It was our government that decided to drop atomic bombs on Japan until they surrended. Had they not surrended? How many would we have dropped?
It was rationalized this would save lives… American and Allied lives. These lives were justified over Japanese soldiers and civilians.
In Korean and Vietnam wars, we demonized our enemy, to make the world safe for democracy. Politicians made decisions that prolonged the war. A limited war with “rules” was favored over direct confrontation with China.
Along the way, our covert operations were strengthened. The CIA - Studies and Observation group, US Army Special Forced, etc.
Then the U.S. Army School of the Americas. We started to train our allies … or who we thought were our allies. With U.S. taxpayer money, we trained most of the dictators and intelligence / special operations armies of South America. It came out that the US trained many secret police agencies that tortured innocent civilians.
We trained the secret police for the late Shah of Iran. After the Iranian revolution, it came out how the Shah’s secret police used torture on their opposition.
Protect American interests… whatever that means… support a dictator because our government thinks it can control them. Provide them weapons and military advisors and look the other way as torture is committed.
Our CIA has been efficent in doing things outside its mandate. From Air America, Southern Air Transport, arming the contras, arming the Afghan freedom fighters to fight the Soviets (how many of those freedom fighters have children and granchildren fighting Israel, the US and its allies.
Am I surprised at torture at Abu Grade prison? Am I surprised at “outsourcing” military tasks to private contractors who are outside the Geneva convention, the law of Land warfare, and even the US Department of Justice?
No, I am saddened. We need to live by the laws we make and not stoop to the level of enemy.
President Bush is still convinced that the “Groom Lake facility” still needs to be classified. A rational person would assume we have captured Chinese and Soviet weapons.
I doubt that our government would admit to stealing plans, documents, weapons, kidnapping, and murder. All in the name of democracy and freedom.
We shouldn’t have to account for the conduct of our spies during the Cold War to obtain military secrets from our adversaries during that period. We should not have to recount deception, theft, murder, and perhaps torture to keep the US edge in intelligence.
Even if we do outlaw torture, I imagine there would be those that would violate the “spirit of the law” and find ways around the letter of the law.
Should an atomic bomb be denonated on US soil by terrorist, a horrible thought yet a very real fear, the public would cry out for protection.
There would be those advocating security measures that would make the East German Stazi, the Israeli IDF, and the Soviet KGB look like amatuers at creating a police state.
I pray to God that we never have such a scenario. I hope that the spirit of freedom wins out over the spirit of “an eye for an eye”.
Would the so called Security Moms (and Dads) allow legislation to pass creating a police state that would effectively bypass the Bill of Rights to “keep us safe from terror” should we lose an American city to terror?
In effect, we would be fighting terror with terror. As ask you to join me in prayer that this never happens.