Your vacation has been good for you, Greg!

More Italian islands! Less Caribbean consulting!

Posted by: Laura at June 22, 2005 01:27 AM | Permalink to this comment

It comes back to the question you won't treat: How can we get these guys to talk? You're willing only to say what you won't do, which is whatever method is named to you, it seems. What will you do? Please, tell me. Perhaps the Spanish Inquisition can be summoned to use their Comfy Chair. No one would expect that! ;>

In the absence of clearly defined methods

(e.g., you may use .7cc/kg of scopolamine-morphine; 15 min/session of beatings with open hands only; you may pull up to eight teeth; you may put the subjects in a sensory deprivation tank and play spooky sounds at them but no higher than 100dB; you may show them pictures of their families and threaten them, but not actually do anything, though you can Photoshop them being raped, etc; you may combine three of these methods per session),

perhaps they are "pushing buttons till something works" within the bounds they perceive. Perhaps they believe that these physical methods have been obliquely supported in US prison abuse cases, or otherwise in other countries whose opinion we favor. Certainly these methods do not exceed the French--read up on their war in Algeria, the one they lost; they go the full ride.

All of this is distasteful, and we would rather not think about it, much as those who support abortion do not necessarily care to contemplate the details of a D&C or ID&X ("partial-birth abortion"), but desire the outcome of a woman avoiding motherhood.

It's also quite simple to find precedents. US GIs executed SS troops after Malmedy in what could be called murders; a rather disturbing occurrence can be seen towards the end of the great D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan ("Look, Ma, I washed for supper!) if one wishes to visualize the kind of thing that can happen in savage battle.

And at the liberation of the death camps, I believe that there were episodes not only summary executions, but of public humiliation of the guards involved I wouldn't be surprised if some Kommandant or other ended up soiling his pants. Nor that a Werewolf caught infiltrating the lines might have been introduced to a field telephone.

And few tears for 'em. Right? RIGHT?

No, I shouldn't shout, but seriously, there is perspective called for here.

If your chief complaint is "the hypocrisy" then what? Abjure the Geneva Conventions formally? Censor these occurrences in the media or otherwise prevent their unearthing? No, we must stop it. And then what? Refuse to interrogate? Accept the limited results available with people who know you can't be mean to them? How did/do the public and the government in France recall those days? What do they do now?

I wouldn't say this about the Iraqi Army as it existed; but these guys are no kind of army I recognize. They respect no rights, and I say they have no rights. They are wolves, to be dealt with as wolves are. If this means we can't do anything unchivalrous, but that we may just kill 'em on the battlefield after asking them nicely if they wish to rat, that is one tactic.

No rights? Tsk, tsk! Everyone has rights. Due process of law, cruel and inhuman punishment (although some of the Founders spoke explicitly of the necessity for e.g. branding some convicts), that all sounds very fine and large. But in fact these rights are specifically defined and specifically do not apply to people who violate these Conventions, i.e. fixed sign at a distance, no use of human shields, command authority, etc.

Nobody is going around saying Yay! Torture! I am not interested in people who get a charge out of it. I wish it would be done professionally, and that if possible, non-dehumanizing (whatever that means) or just non-gross means could be developed. I regret that our guys somethimes have to get involved in this. There's no upside.

Except that you may stop a bus full of schoolchildren from being blown up.

Is torture worse than death? Because everyone seems to implicitly accept the necessity for killing.

What will you do?

Posted by: Nichevo at June 22, 2005 02:17 AM | Permalink to this comment

It comes back to the question you won't treat: How can we get these guys to talk? You're willing only to say what you won't do, which is whatever method is named to you, it seems. What will you do? Please, tell me. Perhaps the Spanish Inquisition can be summoned to use their Comfy Chair. No one would expect that! ;>

its easy to get people to talk....torture them.

But the goal isn't to just get them to talk. Its to get them to provide you with information that is important in a timely fashion.

If you torture me, I guarantee that I'll tell you whatever you want to hear in order to stop the torture. It won't matter to me whether its the truth --- all that will matter is that you hear something that makes you stop torturing me.

That's why confessions that are made under duress are thrown out of courts in the United States, and why intelligence experts place almost no value on information that is acquired through torture.

Now, I do have a lot of sympathy for the "a terrorist has an atom bomb, and we have to torture his associate to prevent the terrorist from denotating it in Washington DC in the next 12 hours" situation --- but we don't really live in the same world as agent Jack Bauer from "24", now do we?

And the fact is that we have beaten to death at least one person who was completely innocent of any association with terrorism, solely because "torture" became acceptable in Bagram Afghanistan. (and we know of at least one other death there caused by the exact same torture technique--- and the idea that these two incidences of torture were isolated is completely absurd.) Nevertheless, Osama bin Laden is still at large....and if that doesn't convince you of how ineffective torture is as a means of gathering good information, nothing will.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 22, 2005 02:35 AM | Permalink to this comment

Sometimes torture may work and sometimes it mayn't. But I bet I wouldn't have to cut off too many of your fingers before you gave me your PIN number. Some data are more clear-cut and easier to get than others.

Certainly, info (e.g., the PIN number) must be checked, and some innocent guy you start working on may be ready to tell you he started the Chicago fire ten minutes in. But if you're going to lie you have to be able to lie convincingly. I do imagine one gets to a point where "I don't know" may be believed if you haven't been caught red-handed.

A professional approach would address these problems. A Jack Bauer type with experience may be able to tell someone's not guilty quicker than a couple of farmboys who don't speak the language.

As for the uselessness of torture, why do we do renditions if we don't think their means are more effective than ours? And these people aren't coming to court in the United States, because they didn't rob a bank in Duluth, Michigan. They were caught in a shack in Mosul with four guys chained to the wall, guys who would laugh the rest of the life out of themselves if they heard what some people here call Nazi/Pol Pot-level torture.

As for OBL, he is probably at well-documented GPS coordinates in Pakistan, waiting for us to figure out how to handle the fall of Musharraf if we go in and annoy the tribesmen too much. And obviously, if your security is good enough, you protect the key knowledge. Plenty of these guys are giving up their mothers; if they don't know where OBL is they can't give him up, though. This is a non sequitur.

The plight of the innocents caught up in the mix is really too bad, I agree. That's an argument to improve, not to stop.

Posted by: Nichevo at June 22, 2005 03:05 AM | Permalink to this comment

PS You still haven't said what we *may* do. Painless drugs? Bribes? Hypnotism? Throw me a bone here, we all seem to acknowledge the need for interrogation per se. Harsh language?

Posted by: Nichevo at June 22, 2005 03:08 AM | Permalink to this comment

Sorry to serial post...but
"Nevertheless, Osama bin Laden is still at large....and if that doesn't convince you of how ineffective torture is as a means of gathering good information, nothing will."

could be rephrased as...oh, "anything" in place of "torture" because "nothing" has worked as far as that contention goes.

The uselessness of ELINT. Of HUMINT. Of bribery. Of war. Of buying their oil. Of reconstruction and humanitarian aid. Of cultural interchange. Of seduction, honey-traps, intermarriage. Of sound detective work. Of sophisticated religious debates with Islamic clerics. Of spreading for the oil sheikhs these last fifty years and especially these last four or so.. Of not letting the Balkan Muslims get stomped.

Nothing has worked, if by working you mean delivering OBL. So am I convinced of the futility of existence, or of fighting the war?

As learned in every war in history, the loser will submit when reduced in population by 0-100%. The closer to 0%, the better, to be sure. But as per Wretchard's Fourth Conjecture, they will go to 100% before we will. If torture saves lives, that would appear to be utilitarian. Lawless? Perhaps the law is an ass.

Posted by: Nichevo at June 22, 2005 04:31 AM | Permalink to this comment

I think there is more schizophrenia on this issue than any I've ever seen before. Each side is sincerely talking about different manifestations of the same topic. For the Hannity/Limbaugh crowd, Durbin is conflating fiddling with the thermostat or disorienting bad guys by chaining them to the floor to real torture, and this is not fair. The problems in the FBI memo (at least the portions I have been exposed to) sounded more like what a recalcitrant saloon keeper would get from the Daley machine in Chicago than what you would get from the Gestapo.
To the tendentious left, from Andrew Sullivan out to the ultra-violet, the issue is beatings, broken bones, sodomy with a light fixture, etc. I think there could be a lot more consensus if we could define what we are talking about, but the MSM does this Ali Shuffle with the facts whenever they discuss this issue.

Posted by: wayne at June 22, 2005 05:54 AM | Permalink to this comment

It's one of those optical illusion thigs. If you stare real, real hard at Gitmo all those other pesky non American things like beheadings and real torture and real Gulags (over the wire from Gitmo) just sort of disappear.

Posted by: Lee at June 22, 2005 07:24 AM | Permalink to this comment

Well I don't listen to Hannity or O'Reilly or Limbaugh but I found Durbin's rhetoric atrocious and I'm glad he finally apologized.

The "I Love Gitmo" stuff strikes me as an ironic response to the Gitmo hysteria - not a serious endorsement of torture. I usually would agree that some of what Durbin describes should not be permitted. But the critics, not just Durbin, have all lost the plot. Too many of them are driven by ideological opposition to the whole WoT and are trying to bring it to a complete halt, not just reform tactics and policy. Even those that do not fall in that category, like Sullivan (and perhaps Durbin too), have allowed themselves to get swept up in the hysterical hand-wringing and allowed the debate to degenerate to the level of...well, the level of Dick Durbin's ridiculous comments about rap music and killing fields.

Incidentally, though John Cole points out that there were other parts of the speech that were reasonable, I found there were also passages that were laughably stupid and simplistic that nobody has commented on yet. E.g.:

Polls show that Muslims have positive attitudes toward the American people and our values. However, overall, favorable ratings toward the United States and its Government are very low. This is driven largely by the negative attitudes toward the policies of this administration.

What kind of crude drivel is Durbin peddaling on the floor of the Senate?! 'Why do they hate us, dude?!' 'Gitmo, of course' At least he didn't mention 'the Arab Street'.

Posted by: John in Tokyo at June 22, 2005 10:12 AM | Permalink to this comment

PS You still haven't said what we *may* do. Painless drugs? Bribes? Hypnotism? Throw me a bone here, we all seem to acknowledge the need for interrogation per se. Harsh language?

I think that the answer to that is fairly simple....

we should only employ methods that you would find acceptable if they were being applied to captured American military personnel.

The fact is that if Durbin had been talking about an American soldier, and not "the enemy", there is little doubt in my mind that you would be screaming bloody murder about the brutality and inhumanity of the people responsible for the treatment to which that soldier had been subjected.

You would certainly be outraged if anyone suggested that such treatment was justified and acceptable in pursuit of the enemy's objectives. You would never accept the idea that it would be okay for the enemy to treat an American that way just to find out information that would make it possible for the enemy to more effectively attack other American troops, and/or prepare themselves for planned attacks by American troops.

So, what to you think its allowable for our enemy to do to American troops to get information? Painless drugs? Bribes? Hypnotism? Throw me a bone here, we all seem to acknowledge the need for interrogation per se. Harsh language?

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 22, 2005 01:48 PM | Permalink to this comment

"So, what to you think its allowable for our enemy to do to American troops to get information?"

Obviously not turn up rap music too loud, or permit Christina Aguilera to be played.

Because that's TOOOOOORRRRTTTTTUUUUUURRRREEEEEE!!!!!

Posted by: Al at June 22, 2005 04:20 PM | Permalink to this comment

So illegal combatants should get all the same rights as POWs as defined under Geneva? That takes away some of the incentives to NOT be an illegal combatant, doesnt it?

Posted by: liberalhawk at June 22, 2005 04:44 PM | Permalink to this comment

So illegal combatants should get all the same rights as POWs as defined under Geneva? That takes away some of the incentives to NOT be an illegal combatant, doesnt it?

puhleez, stop with the "illegal combatant" bullshit. Its not a category that anyone but wingnut Americans recognize, and has no relevance to the discussion of how we treat prisoners.

(I mean, there are hundreds, of not thousands, of Americans working as mercenaries in Iraq right now. They qualify under your definition of "illegal combatants" -- they don't answer to any state military bureaucracy, they carry concealled weapons, and they are often dressed in plain clothes. )

The question of how we treat prisoners, and how we interrogate them, is a question of basic human rights that transcend made up categories like "illegal combatants."

And Americans cannot demand that their soldiers be provided with basic human rights unless they are willing to provide those same rights to those it has labelled its enemies.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 22, 2005 04:57 PM | Permalink to this comment

Its not a category that anyone but wingnut Americans recognize

Yeah, wingnuts and the Supreme Court and the Third Geneva Convention. But, of course, to the moonbats out there, the Supreme Court and the Third Geneva Convention ARE wingnuts!

Posted by: Al at June 22, 2005 05:28 PM | Permalink to this comment

p. lukasiak, again you have avoided the question. What CAN we do? Define affirmatively, not negatively. Presumably we would want our guys to have a stable of virgins sexing them into oblivion. We've already seen they don't like that.

Meanwhile, now it's back to a million pounds, Lady Astor? i.e. you have abandoned principle and now assert we should be nice out of selfish concern for our prisoners? Well they were cutting off heads before we were applying panties and rock music.

There has to be a deterrent for illegal combatants. If you refuse to recognize this distinction, especially by mere assertion, please stop replying as you will only waste my time. You do know, don't you, that when a violation occurs, the Geneva Convention specifically permits the other side to retaliate in kind? i.e., if attacked with gas, we may attack with gas?

You are unrealistic and I don't respect your putative (not to say irregular) idealism. You want to eat the meat but you don't want to know what the butcher does. In terms of the Golden Rule as you apply it, I suppose we should surrender because that's what we think they should do. Again, you offer nothing but idle criticism.

PS: re the mercenaries, they are treated separately and have their own regulations. I don't recall but I wouldn't be surprised if you were one of those Kossack types crapping on the Blackwater contractors who got burned in Fallujah. Don't get solicitous about protecting our poor dear mercenaries now! It doesn't wear well on you.

The rules you want apply to the Iraqi Army, not the terrorists. Anybody in any prior age from WWII to the Napoleonic Wars would be laughing at you.

Posted by: Nichevo at June 22, 2005 05:37 PM | Permalink to this comment

This is one of those discussions that to me seem to waver between interesting and irrelevant.

It makes sense to speak of torture in the abstract if there is a question as to a program of extracting information from detainees through forced physical duress. Suppose there is no such program, and duress -- sometimes quite severe -- is imposed on detainees for other reasons. These could include lower-level personnel trying to be creative in getting information on their own, or discipline for detainees breaking prison rules, or just the expression of contempt for detainees by interrogators and guards.

Quite a lot could be said about this subject, but I would venture here only that most reported prisoner abuse to date seems to fall into the latter category -- that is, it was abuse outside of a properly supervised program to extract information from detainees. To the extent that is the case, discussions of torture in the abstract are moot. Any tactic in war is suspect if it yields no return, and should be doubly suspect if it carries with it a price. Abuse of detainees without information useful to us certainly meets both criteria -- and especially if detainees apprehended in Iraq since 2003 are included this is the great majority of detainees.

Posted by: JEB at June 22, 2005 06:00 PM | Permalink to this comment

"Abuse of detainees without information useful to us certainly meets both criteria -- and especially if detainees apprehended in Iraq since 2003 are included this is the great majority of detainees"

Agree absolutely. But the tshirts in question, the Durbin, comments, the Amnesty comment etc all were in regard to Gitmo, which holds no one caught in Iraq, or to related places like Bagram, etc which also hold no one caught in Iraq.

Posted by: liberalhawk at June 22, 2005 06:06 PM | Permalink to this comment

Quite a lot could be said about this subject, but I would venture here only that most reported prisoner abuse to date seems to fall into the latter category -- that is, it was abuse outside of a properly supervised program to extract information from detainees.

allow me to refer you to a recent post from John Cole, who is (like our host) another non-insane conservative. Cole argues rather persuasively that the conditions described in the letter from the FBI agent read by Dick Durbin were, in fact, entirely consistent with "approved" methods of interrogation...

http://www.balloon-juice.com/archives/005513.html

p. lukasiak, again you have avoided the question. What CAN we do?

since you are the one who approves of torture, I think that the question of what you think are the techniques to which you think American military personnel should be subject deserves an answer first.

But if I had to answer, I'd point to the geneva conventions....

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 22, 2005 06:26 PM | Permalink to this comment

True enough, though frankly I doubt the prisoner abuse issue would be salient now overseas if the abuses at Abu Ghraib had not happened first; they enabled Arab media in particular to conflate sexual and other humiliation of Muslims picked up more or less at random with abuse of those held at Guantanamo, more of whom as you suggest are unambigiously terrorists.

More of them, that is, not all of them and probably not most of them either. Most detainees in Cuba were picked up in Afghanistan, often by personnel not trained to distinguish terrorists from the cannon fodder the Taliban relied on to do its fighting. Moreover regular procedures to screen out and release detainees with no useful information and unlikely to pose a significant threat have not been in place for long.

About Sen. Durbin I have only to say that anyone possessed of a staff and years of experience in public office who cannot take a subject the administration has badly screwed up and indict it without bringing in the Nazis and Khmer Rouge probably should have kept quiet. And anyone intimidated by Sean Hannity really needs to toughen up. Not to sidetrack the discussion here, but it might be recalled that last fall the Democrats nominated for national office two show horse Senators who had the Republican incumbents on national television for a grand total of six hours and never mentioned prisoner abuse even once. Either you care enough about an issue like this to stake out ground and hold it, or you shouldn't be in public life.

Posted by: JEB at June 22, 2005 06:31 PM | Permalink to this comment

"I'd point to the geneva conventions...." the same ones that establish the category of illegal combatants?

Posted by: liberalhawk at June 22, 2005 06:52 PM | Permalink to this comment

but it might be recalled that last fall the Democrats nominated for national office two show horse Senators who had the Republican incumbents on national television for a grand total of six hours and never mentioned prisoner abuse even once.

it should also be noted that 2 of those four hours were devoted exclusively to domestic issues, and that the questions and subject matter were not determined by the candidates, but by "journalists".

As well, it should be noted that during the election campaign, the true nature and extent of US prisoner abuse was unknown -- the Bush administration was still talking about "a few bad apples".... and that had Kerry suggested at that point that torture and abuse was more widespread, there would have been a shitstorm....

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 22, 2005 06:53 PM | Permalink to this comment

p --

The torture memos had come out by the debates, even though the abuses at Guantanamo were not generally known. I tend to second JEB on this one. You think Kerry -- who handled himself pretty well in the debates -- could have taken at least one little risk and spoken about his disgust about Abu G and the happy bureaucrat memoing about torture and tied the President right to it.

Posted by: Appalled Moderate at June 22, 2005 07:35 PM | Permalink to this comment

p --

The torture memos had come out by the debates, even though the abuses at Guantanamo were not generally known. I tend to second JEB on this one. You think Kerry -- who handled himself pretty well in the debates -- could have taken at least one little risk and spoken about his disgust about Abu G and the happy bureaucrat memoing about torture and tied the President right to it.

Posted by: Appalled Moderate at June 22, 2005 07:36 PM | Permalink to this comment

"True enough, though frankly I doubt the prisoner abuse issue would be salient now overseas if the abuses at Abu Ghraib had not happened first; they enabled Arab media in particular to conflate sexual and other humiliation of Muslims picked up more or less at random with abuse of those held at Guantanamo, more of whom as you suggest are unambigiously terrorists."

while im not that sure about the entire question of the hearts and minds salience of this in the muslim world (im not denying it, just the muslim world is a large and complex place) I broadly agree. Which leads to a general orientation I find lacking anywhere in the blogosphere - a sense that what was done at Abu Graib was a disaster for the US, and that people higher up the chain should have been held more responsible then they were - but that nonetheless some of the controversial techniques ARE justified for at least some prisoners in Gitmo and elsewhere. And I dont mean that in the abstract - though without knowledge of which prisoners are thought to know what, which have been cooperating, etc its hard on the outside to be specific.

I would agree that the grouping together of Taliban footsoldiers and AQ members in Gitmo certainly looks like a mistake now. While it may have been justified as a temporary expedient in December 2001, we should be way past that. Im actually supportive of the notion of shutting Gitmo - the footsoldiers should be rendered back to Kharzai, who can keep or release as he sees fit. The Higher ups can be sent off to Diego Garcia or other less publicized places. The convenience of being close to DC is trumped, I think, by the excessive publicity Gitmo has had.

But that still leaves Nic's question - what do you do with the serious AQ types in Diego when youve got them there. Guys who ARE extensively trained in resisting interrogation. And who you DO need to get intell from. Between hand wringing on the left(and some on the right, like Sully) , and defensiveness on the right, i dont see a real debate on that yet.

Posted by: liberalhawk at June 22, 2005 08:11 PM | Permalink to this comment

I think there has actually been a great deal of debate on this subject within the military and intelligence communities. Not to flog a dead horse here, but the number of prisoners likely to have access to information about imminent attacks (especially imminent attacks in the US) is going to be quite small, and the question of how rough to get in interrogating the others largely moot. For the rest of them, extreme interrogation tactics make no sense, because they are not going anywhere. I can see trying to extract organizational and other information by building relationships with them, and if with some of the al Qaeda types we wanted to go to the other extreme and have them shot after drumhead trial I wouldn't object to that either -- though it's probably too late to adopt that course.

Posted by: JEB at June 22, 2005 08:23 PM | Permalink to this comment

Clearly torture is justified under certain circumstances, clearly the great majority of these prisoners are not tortured, clearly the great majority of these prisoners are not covered by the Geneva convention, clearly we have gone out of our way to cater to the Muslim sensibilities since 9/11, clearly much of the Democratic leadership is ruled by pure partisanship, and clearly very many on the left are making an issue of this simply because it is a Republican administration in charge.

Posted by: exhelodrvr at June 22, 2005 09:51 PM | Permalink to this comment

re: Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 22, 2005 06:26 PM

Well, let's see. In the West we have always accepted that a soldier captured out of uniform may be shot as a spy. I think everybody agrees with that. In the Revolutionary War, IIRC, they hanged Nathan Hale and we hanged Major Andre. So we may certainly shoot all these people.

I don't know if torture or whatever is likewise accepted as a risk under those circumstances; it probably is; and even if I don't like it, I believe they understand that is a risk they run. Certainly spies have been tortured. Certainly our POWs have been tortured. I thik a more appropriate standard than the Golden Rule is tit-for-tat.

Otherwise, I think the sex stuff is on, by your standards. I suppose we could run an Assassin type indoctrination--show them drug-and-sex-induced paradise and then use this as a lever to get them to talk or act to betray their comrades.

Again, though, you have dodged the issue, and will continue to do so. Is it because you don't understand or you fear losing the argument?

Posted by: Nichevo at June 22, 2005 11:23 PM | Permalink to this comment

In the West we have always accepted that a soldier captured out of uniform may be shot as a spy.

really? we shot every german soldier that we found out of uniform because he deserted the German Army at the end of WWII?

The absurdity of your claim --- comparing "spies" to people caught on a battlefield who didn't happen to be wearing a uniform because of the ad hoc nature of the defense of Afghanistan by "irregular" forces --- belies your desperation to make a point.

Face it. You like torture. Now, if you'll just tell us what kind of torture you think is appropriate to subject American military personnel to, we can discuss whether or not those methods are appropriate.

(after all, if the US can create a whole new category of people captured on the battlefield based on a legal theory that no one else in the world accepts, the enemy can claim that their interpretation of International Law says that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, which under their interpretation of the laws makes American soldiers illegal combatants if not war criminals, and thus not covered under the Geneva Conventions.)

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 22, 2005 11:59 PM | Permalink to this comment

"really? we shot every german soldier that we found out of uniform because he deserted the German Army at the end of WWII?"

Now you're trolling, though the host seems not to mind. Obviously we needn't shoot *every* prisoner. Your example is flummery.

"The absurdity of your claim --- comparing "spies" to people caught on a battlefield who didn't happen to be wearing a uniform because of the ad hoc nature of the defense of Afghanistan by "irregular" forces --- belies your desperation to make a point."

Okay, now we'r getting somewhere. You think the Geneva Conventions apply to us, but not to them. I think the "ad hoc nature" of AQ could afford some armbands, say, and perhaps extend to the non-commission of atrocities far beyond the dreams of the worst sadist at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo or wherever.

"Face it. You like torture...." Again with the trolling. I deny your premise. Meanwhile, the terrorists will do anything they like with anybody they catch, so I don't see any downside vis-a-vis protecting our people, Mrs. Astor.

Posted by: Nichevo at June 23, 2005 12:28 AM | Permalink to this comment

Nichevo,

You will get Ward Churchill to admit he was wrong before Mr. Lukasiak will. I've read his comments for a while now and they are depressingly predictable.

Greg,

Now that the Dem's are calling for an independent investigation/commission on these issues, why not recommend that the Repub's call their bluff? I propose that we get a panel headed by Vaclav Havel and Natan Scheranski [sp] to determine if our treatment of these poor widdie terrorists is comparable, in any way and by any metric, to what they recieved in the Gulag. If we have made an isolated (or systemic) mistake, own up to it, and point out to the world community that this is the equivalent of being arrested for jaywalking while rushing to report a rape.

Posted by: wayne at June 23, 2005 12:36 AM | Permalink to this comment

No, we shot the Germans who had deserted who then subsequently attacked American GIs in WWII. Not many, to be sure.

As for your parenthetical paragraph, I think you described reality quite well. US soldiers get no Geneva protections. But yet, somehow, uniniformed, concealed weapon carrying, lone wolf, human shield using, deliberate civilian killing terrorists should be afforded all the protections of US citizens.

Its preposterous. There is such a thing as nescessary evil, and if you can't see that, then step aside for those who can.

Personally, I'm opposed to torture. The detainees at Gitmo should simply be shot.

Posted by: David Meyers at June 23, 2005 12:44 AM | Permalink to this comment

I would like to respectfully disagree with our host's views on Guantánamo. I cite the information at http://www.eriksvane.com/guanta.htm as it is the best summary I have read recently.

Posted by: Adriane at June 23, 2005 02:15 AM | Permalink to this comment

You think the Geneva Conventions apply to us, but not to them. I think the "ad hoc nature" of AQ could afford some armbands, say, and perhaps extend to the non-commission of atrocities far beyond the dreams of the worst sadist at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo or wherever.

and you accuse me of "trolling"?

I think the Geneva Conventions apply to everyone caught on a battlefield. Period. The absurdity of your position is demonstrated by the fact that if someone gets their arm shot off, they won't have their armband --- which under your formulation makes it okay to ignore their basic human rights.

My position is quite simple --- the world doesn't recognize the absurd "illegal combatant" distinction that the US uses to excuse its violations of the basic human rights of those it took prisoner. Were an American soldier found in the conditions described in the letter read by Dick Durbin, we would be outraged, and rightfully so --- and would expect the rest of the world to recognize that our outrage was justified and legitimate.

John Cole at balloon-juice has shown how the conditions of the prisoner described in the letter were consistent with "acceptable" treatment defined by the United States government. And its obvious that when we take the sanitized language of phrases like "stress positions" and "enviromental manipulation" and see what they mean in practice, that what we are talking about is torture -- and that torture is US policy.

That is wrong, and it has to be stopped, and those responsible for those policies have to be held accountable. You can't excuse torture through the use of euphemisms or by desperate efforts to parse the language of treaties prohibiting torture in order to manufacture a legal basis for torture. You might be able to fool yourself, rationalize it away, and justify it --- but when anyone else sees the results, they won't be fooled, and what they will be looking at is torture.

And if and when American military personnel are captured and tortured, and the United States howls in protest, the rest of the world will shake its head and ask "what did you expect?" because the USA is torturing those whom it has taken prisoner.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 23, 2005 12:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

Again, p., I'm saying that AQ under your theory would have obligations too. You will howl if I suggest that you don't, but you always manage to slip the question. We get plenty of head-shaking as it is, and not a little What-did-you-expect, largely I suspect from noble-savageism. The quickest way to end torture against our guys (and against Iraqi civilians) is to win the war.

...That other fellow is right, you will never stop cherry-picking and posting where you see advantage, ignoring where you don't (still ignoring our SERE training, for instance). That would sink you in a debate round but here debate is unlimited, so you can exhaust people as you apparently live here. You are not debating in good faith. Tell me, do you have the flexibility of mind to argue the contrary, were I to suddenly start deploring torture? Just for devil's advocacy? Or could you only win half your rounds in a debate tournament?

Please tell us how to visit your world, p. We've never seen perfection here, it must be interesting.

Posted by: Nichevo at June 23, 2005 01:23 PM | Permalink to this comment

I think someone ought to speak up in defense of the Nazis.

They were the last American enemy to make an effort to treat American prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Given what we have seen since 1945, the argument that Geneva is the key to preventing mistreatment of our own people is less than persuasive.

But having said that, I'd remind people that what we have seen since 1945 is reflective of the nature of America's natural enemies: tyrants, fanatics, the very worst of humanity. That abuse of prisoners is unlikely to make treatment of American prisoners much worse than it would be otherwise is not an argument for it. Arguments against it include the political damage it has caused us in countries with which we are not at war; its undermining of good order and discipline within elements of the military and intelligence services; and the meagre results we have gotten from it.

That hard cases make bad law is an axiom; the worst of the worst terrorists, captured when there is reason to believe terrorist attacks of which they have knowledge are imminent, present a special case. We would be risking a lot if we used this relatively rare scenario to rationalize mistreatment of prisoners in other contexts; it is too easy to relax the rules for detainees their captors are apt to regard with contempt, as a means of allowing their captors to express their contempt. In all our discussion of why Americans are so unpopular in the Muslim world we have overlooked the fact that the Perception Superhighway is a two-way street; we can post here thinking of Muslims as abstractions, but people in daily contact with Muslim detainees are apt to hold them in very low regard indeed, to see them -- often with cause -- as embodying savagery and barbarism. These feelings however understandable cannot be allowed to drive policy.

As a coda to this thread I'd throw out the idea that some of the reported abuses sound to me as if they involved practices certain officials thought might be effective in breaking down prisoners without having much evidence that this was true. In other words, they were properly supervised and approved practices, supervised and approved by people who did not know what they were doing.

To my mind this is another reason to be cautious about the application of extreme interrogation methods -- contrary to Hollywood myth, we don't have many people who are proficient enough with them to make them effective.

Posted by: JEB at June 23, 2005 03:06 PM | Permalink to this comment

Nichevo et al - I can't believe you allowed Lukasiak to state that Juan Cole is a conservative

WHAT?

Sure - and Rush Limbaugh is a liberal

Of course it should be expected with the load of BS that has been coming out of luka's trap here

Lets all be very clear here - luka feels that captured AQ should be treated like US citizens

The reason given range from the ridiculous ( if we don't give them this protection then our troops will suffer if captured ) to the absurd ( the "world" doesn't recognize illegal combatenents )

Keep it up Luka - its this kind of thinking that lost John Kerry the election in 2004 - it allows Howard Dean to run the democratic party into the ground and will allow President Cheney to take the oath of office in January 09 and appoint the rest of the USSC that will make the laws you live under for the rest of your life

Enjoy :)

Posted by: Pogue Mahone at June 23, 2005 03:07 PM | Permalink to this comment

To the luka's of this world the rough talk from Sipowotz during an NYPD Blue interrogation would be called "torture"

I am very interested to hear what they would allow - I notice they NEVER answer

Usual liberal method - just criticize - never make any suggestion

Yep - thats why they lost in 2004 - with a poor economy and an unpopular war - albeit one made unpopular with a constant drumbeat of negativity from the liberal media yearning for a new Vietnam

I can't imagine what more they could want to win in 08 - it will be a slaughter for Hillary

Posted by: Pogue Mahone at June 23, 2005 03:11 PM | Permalink to this comment

Nichevo et al - I can't believe you allowed Lukasiak to state that Juan Cole is a conservative

pogue... I hate to burst your bubble (or, in this case, balloon) but "John Cole" is not "Juan Cole"

John Cole's blog (which a more observant perosn would have noticed was referenced in Greg's initial post in this thread, btw) can be found at http://www.balloon-juice.com

********

as to why I don't get "specific", I'm not an expert on interrogation techniques. But to me, torture is like porn --- you may not be able to precisely delimit where the line is crossed, but when it is crossed, you know it.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 23, 2005 04:10 PM | Permalink to this comment

So we are all to be ruled by your tender heart, p.? Too bad AQ won't agree. Perhaps you should get out and live a little.

Posted by: Nichevo at June 23, 2005 04:59 PM | Permalink to this comment

So we are all to be ruled by your tender heart, p.? Too bad AQ won't agree. Perhaps you should get out and live a little.

How about this for a policy. Officially, we treat every prisoner the way we demand that American prisoners be treated.

Unofficially --- if an interrogator or administration official feels that the information is so vital that they are willing to put their own careers and freedom on the line, then let them do so --- as long as they are willing to lose their job and face prosecution by the International Criminal Court for war crimes if/when the torture is disclosed.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at June 23, 2005 05:10 PM | Permalink to this comment

What CAN we do? Define affirmatively, not negatively.

Apparently, and to some amazement on my side, nobody has directly tried to answer this. So, lets try some clarity.

"Good morning Mr. [Detainee Name] . Have a seat, it's going to be a long day. "
[... 8 - 10 hours of questions and answers, stenographer and/or camera active...]
"Ok, let's call it a day. Have a good night everybody. We'll start tomorrow at 8 am"
Add in a break for lunch and another 2 or 3 shoret ones for concentration purposes.
Repeat until done.

Thats's it. Nothing more. Full Stop, End of Story. Polite, professional, focussed interrogation, like you'd expect it from a government official.

Aside from that the detainee is suppoosed to be detained the way you detain anybody else - respectfully, decently, all basic necessities met, amenities and luxuries as time and circumstances permit

Now was that so difficult ?

A few remarks to the constant revenge/punishment subcurrent present in many posts:

Nothing in this prevents the US from actually prosecuting those folks. I'd even consider a policy of death penalty for everyone met in combat and carrying arms who is not member of a well regulated military force. (one should note, though, that quite a few folks in Guantanamo have not been catpured on the battlefield but arrested in quite normal police actions, sometimes by allies like the Pakistani police).
Make those prosecutions short and efficient.

The verdicts, then, are something to bargain with. Some people get quite talkative when the gallows is a few rooms away. (Note, though, that fake executions are torture, while real ones aren't - there is some point from whereon you will have to pull through with your threat.)

Then there's the prison snitch - bring your detainee into company where he talks, and make that company talk to you.

No, we don't have to buy the implicit line that we absolutely have to get that information somehow. We do what we can, we take what we get.

Not torturing someone is not an act of outstanding reverence towards him - it is decency the possible torturer (and by extension he who commands and authorizes him) ows to his own humanity, and ultimately it is respect of the Creator, who made this human being in His own image and gave him that particular human dignity that to violate is to offend the Creator Himself.

Posted by: Cris at June 23, 2005 08:55 PM | Permalink to this comment

How about this for a policy. Officially, we treat every prisoner the way we demand that American prisoners be treated.

The problem with that policy is that there are no consequences for committing atrocities on captured Americans- they can mutilate with impunity, knowing that their captured comrades in arms will be treated humanely.

I prefer this one: We treat prisoners affiliated with a particular group the way that group treats American prisoners. It's a very simple quid pro quo- you treat our people well, and we will return the consideration. If you don't, well...

Posted by: rosignol at June 24, 2005 04:46 AM | Permalink to this comment

Lying in your own waste for hours is a violation of Geneva Conventions, but I call it abuse, not torture. Misdemeanors are crimes, too.

I support repeated sleep deprivations, with interrogations videotaped, and cross-tabulated in databases for accuracy and to hammer on inaccuracies in the "lies".

I also support renditions to other states that may not follow the same interpretations of the GC.

In general, most prison watching should be done by our "allies" -- like the Paki dictator.

More death sentences should prolly be given to those guilty of fighting; the evidence seems underpublicized. I doubt there is much immediate data the current prisoners know -- I suspect a LOT of important info in contacts and actual actions taken.

I don't love Gitmo, but Higher Standards means Gitmo is Gulag

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at June 24, 2005 11:10 AM | Permalink to this comment

Cris - this was a good one -

-----------------------------

Apparently, and to some amazement on my side, nobody has directly tried to answer this. So, lets try some clarity.

"Good morning Mr. [Detainee Name] . Have a seat, it's going to be a long day. "
[... 8 - 10 hours of questions and answers, stenographer and/or camera active...]
"Ok, let's call it a day. Have a good night everybody. We'll start tomorrow at 8 am"
Add in a break for lunch and another 2 or 3 shoret ones for concentration purposes.
Repeat until done.

Thats's it. Nothing more. Full Stop, End of Story. Polite, professional, focussed interrogation, like you'd expect it from a government official.

--------------------------------------------

By this standard - the methods employed by Sipowitz on NYPD Blue would be "torture"

Now at least I know why luka won't answer this question - he agree's with you of course Cris - but even he realizes how impossibly naive this approach is

Posted by: Pogue Mahone at June 24, 2005 09:03 PM | Permalink to this comment