Forbidden Donut

1. Not torture
2. Torture
3. Torture
4. Torture
5. Torture
6. Torture

Not that it matters anyway because they don't fucking work. Information gathered with these techniques is inherently unreliable. There is no motivation to give accurate information and there's every motivation to confess to a crime you didn't commit, or to implicate uninvolved parties. Add to this the fact that over 400 of the original 775 prisoners were released, meaning they were treated this way and THEN deamed innocent, and it's hard to justify this sort of behavior.

There's a big difference between sodomizing inmates to get answers and slapping them in the belly, but if you're inflicting pain with the intention of coercing a detainee into revealing information, I'm pretty sure we call that torture. It's a waste of time and does nothing positive for our image with the rest of the world.

PS a simply Yes or No would have sufficed in the voting...

6. Waterboarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Material is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

I probably don't understand the whole technique. When they talk about material, what is it in particular ? Can you breath while they pour water ? How can it give fear of drowning if the water isn't going directly in your mouth or on your skin ?

The material is usually cotton based so as it absorbs water it gives the victim the feeling that their head is completely surrounded by water and the water is poured directly onto their mouth and nose so that it immediately pours down their throat and up their nose.

From what I understand from speaking to a few sources, torture techniques based on pain and violence are what are ineffective. Techniques based on sensory deprivation however, such as waterboarding, cold cell and the long standing are very effective at getting the information needed. They don't entice the victim to say what they want as much as make the victim mentally incompetent at lying.

waterboarding falls in the pain and violence. It's a less violent appearing version of tying someones feet and holding them upside down in a bucket, or forcibly dunking them underwater...

Why not get answers through good police work and investigation? I don't understand why we need to just pick "suspects" up and start torturing them, hoping they know something. We don't do that for people that could potentially be serial killers or child molesters, why do it for terrorists?

because terrorists are backwards, evil, and dangerous. they have no morals or decency and should be treated like the animals they are.

Redraft above proposal to replace terrorists with Muslims and their sympathizers and you're thinking like the government.

Serial killers, rapists and pedophiles are evil,dangerous,have no morals or decency either.

The difference is that serial killers, rapists, and pedophiles are generally crazy people that are out of touch with reality, and terrorists are not. Terrorists are typically completely sane, and often highly educated. They simply follow an radical ideological belief that is different then we do.

You also have to consider the implications what what each one will face if they talk. The serial killers, rapists, and pedophiles don't have to worry about turning other people in, or ruining an operation. Terrorists on the other hand have entire networks that can come down because one person talks. People often don't realize, most of the time people being interrogated aren't there to implicate themselves by confessing. The evidence in most cases speaks for itself. Its a matter of getting the information to lead farther down the line, something that is getting harder and harder to do every year.

but the people in guantanamo didn't even have to be formally charged. Since they are being held "for questioning" they aren't even necessarily considered guilty yet. Possibly guilty of maybe knowing something about a potential terrorist attack...

I can't shake the feeling that all this talk about these techniques protecting us is sort of a "see, this rock keeps cougars out of hawaii!" type rhetoric. We haven't been attacked, so clearly our techniques are working.

It's a numbers game, like saying the troop surge is working because violence is down, but failing to point out that we separated the sunni and shi'a muslims, who are now living in different ghettos with walls built around them to keep them from seeing each other, and we clear all the streets that any political figure is going to be near before they head out of their quarters which is guarded by a bunch of soldiers with big guns.

I just don't think the evidence we're being supplied with constitutes proof of increased security, either here or overseas.

I feel that anybody who voted yes should experience some of these techniques (delivered by Mr. T) and then we can have a re-vote.

I understand your point... but that wouldn't everyone who voted no still be against that?

I agree with Jedd. That seems a little contradictory.

I guess my opinion on the matter also depends on how the people were detained or the evidence against them. Personally, anyone anyone with undeniable evidence against them in regards to terrorist behavior, fuck em. Whether it be planning 9/11 or planting IEDs in Iraq, it doesn't matter. Once they start blowing things or people up, I'd just assume shoot them in the head and bill their country for the bullet, after getting whatever information out of them you can. That's probably illegal though. Interrogation isn't.

US citizens on the other hand, or people picked up just for suspicious activity are a completely different matter.

I believe that excessive pain and agony is unnecessary. But shooting them in the face and killing them instantly hasn't yet been proved painful. At least, not for very long.

It doesn't matter who these people are. Let's say we weren't the strongest country on the fucking planet for a moment.

In my crazy, mixed-up, backwards version of reality, Iraq is more powerful than us. And they consider our actions in the gulf war and the war on terror to be, in fact, terrorism. You're visiting somebody over in the region and you get arrested, tortured, detained, tortured, interrogated and tortured. Still sound justified?

I'm not saying it's worthless and we don't find out anything from it. I'm not saying that we aren't detaining mostly threatening individuals on somewhat legitimate grounds. I'm just trying to say that just because we're strong enough and powerful enough doesn't make it justified.

aNunes I liked your argument alot. It brings a side of the story implying the position of USA about power that most people don't take into consideration.

It's not my argument really. It's a Kant thing called the categorical imperative. Basically it's the golden rule with some more stipulations and implications. But it boils down to the basic, 'Do unto others as you'd have done unto yourself'.

Sounds like an application of Occam's Razor.