US Torture (warning, graphic)

reply to post by Malcram


My point was not whether they were innocent or guilty for we both know many have been released already and some went back to their lives and some went back to start again right where they left off as a terrorist.
So yes I agree with you that many were captured and basically put into PoW status of some kind at gitmo to later be released…ya war is hell…

To get to my point….

Those at Gitmo that is there now or have been there have not been tortured/interrogated as some kind of automatic approach for anyone that ends up there.

Most interrogations are actually done there and in the field are with polygraphers to determine the level of credibility. For the FEW that actually hold vital intelligences in our efforts against these terrorist groups they have experienced the other course of forceful interrogation.

reply to post by Divinorumus


its unbelievable how everyone is sticking up for terrorists, first they kill thousands of Americans, and when they capture Americans they torture them/us by hacking at their neck with a dull blade(so it will be more painful and take longer) and they record a video of it and send it to news stations and the government. how could you say what we do is terrible when we have the best prison conditions in the world and we are the most humane country in the world. also maybe the terrorist's should wear uniforms so we would at least know which soldiers we take are actually soldiers.

Here is a thread that some one started and i think it is very relevant to this discussion.

Journalist bets he can stand waterboarding for 15 seconds (Video)


Journalist bets he can stand waterboarding for 15 seconds (Video)

Have a look and see what you think of it.

The only way to get information is to torture these days. There are other ways but torture is the most effective as it pushes the body to its limits so you have no other choice to tell who ever it is what ever it is you were hiding.
I agree sometimes the methods are a bit over the top and possibly not needed but there is nothing we can do about it... Let the government use their techniques!

Originally posted by The Shade
The only way to get information is to torture these days. There are other ways but torture is the most effective as it pushes the body to its limits so you have no other choice to tell who ever it is what ever it is you were hiding.
I agree sometimes the methods are a bit over the top and possibly not needed but there is nothing we can do about it... Let the government use their techniques!

Sounds very interesting, but i think it is only the sound that is.
Experts claim torture works counter productive.
I posted this article before but i realise that not every one will read all the 15 pages so i post it again.
It is an experts view on this subject.


Torture? It probably killed more Americans than 9/11

In his compelling book How to Break a Terrorist, Major Alexander explains that prisoners subjected to abuse usually clam up, say nothing, or provide misleading information. In an interview he was particularly dismissive of the "ticking bomb" argument often used in the justification of torture. This supposes that there is a bomb timed to explode on a bus or in the street which will kill many civilians. The authorities hold a prisoner who knows where the bomb is. Should they not torture him to find out in time where the bomb is before it explodes?

Major Alexander says he faced the "ticking time bomb" every day in Iraq because "we held people who knew about future suicide bombings". Leaving aside the moral arguments, he says torture simply does not work. "It hardens their resolve. They shut up." He points out that the FBI uses normal methods of interrogation to build up trust even when they are investigating a kidnapping and time is of the essence. He would do the same, he says, "even if my mother was on a bus" with a hypothetical ticking bomb on board. It is quite untrue to imagine that torture is the fastest way of obtaining information, he says.

www.independent.co.uk...

And i urge every one who wants to kill the messenger on this one to read the man's credentials first.

More than 25 of the CIA's war-on-terror prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation for as long as 11 days at a time during the administration of former president George Bush, according to The Los Angeles Times.

At one stage during the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days, the Times reported, citing memoranda made public by the Justice department last month.

The limit was later reduced to just over a week, the report stated.

Sleep deprivation was one of the most important elements in the CIA's interrogation programme, seen as more effective than more violent techniques used to help break the will of suspects.

SOURCE

The Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation can have serious effects on your health in the form of physical and mental impairments. Inadequate rest impairs our ability to think, to handle stress, to maintain a healthy immune system and to moderate our emotions. In fact, sleep is so important to our overall health that total sleep deprivation has been proven to be fatal: lab rats denied the chance to rest die within two to three weeks. Find out more from this Free Guide to sleep disorders.

SOURCE

Sleep deprivation is not like torture - it is a form of torture, a tactic favoured by the KGB and the Japanese in PoW camps in World War Two.

The British Army was also accused of using sleep deprivation to extract information from suspected IRA members in 1971.

"It is such a standard form of torture that basically everybody has used it at one time or another," says Andrew Hogg, of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.

SOURCE

[edit on 11-5-2009 by jaamaan]

[edit on 11-5-2009 by jaamaan]

Could be wrong but i coulda swore ranking military officers said not a single terrorist plot was discovered/stopped by information gathered by way of torture. In fact the bulk of those experienced with torture make it quite obvious that the victims will say whatever they believe the torturers want to hear meaning valuable resources are wasted investigating worthless confessions. Are not the lives of American soldiers endangered because intelligence resources are diverted from investigating legitimate information and leads to check out these false desperate attempts to confess meant only to stop the torture?
The people being tortured would have sworn Bin Laden was hiding at Disneyland if they believed it would have made the pain stop. You really believe such 'confessions' have any intelligence value?

I think William Munny from Unforgiven sums it up best, "We all got it coming." The fact is all sides of this argument are wrong. The torturers are wrong and the terrorists are wrong, both victimize innocents, neither are justified in their actions. We are in the midst of a war, and there are no real rules except in retrospect. We can judge the actions of another as right or wrong only based on our limited experience. There are some truths to behold here, hate begets hate, violence begets violence. No one holds any high ground here, so those of you condemning torture, you may think you are right, but your voice has no legitimacy until you suffer at the hands of terror, look that terrorist in the eye and have the strength to say I forgive you. You who support the torture of terrorist suspects you are a terrorist yourself.

The only way to be victorious in this war is to not perpetuate the cycle by ending it with our own actions whether that be by death at the hands of terrorists, or turning the other cheek. This is ultimately an evil world filled with evil people, no one should have any illusions to the contrary. Americans do evil things every day all over the world to all kinds of people including their own. People respond to evil with evil and this has gone on since the beginning of human history.

Is torture right? No! But the democratically elected leaders of our nation determined what was torture, and what wasn't. What was right and ethical and what wasn't. Were they wrong? Does it matter? Will it change anything? The offenses occurred and can not be taken back. If you paid taxes in the U.S. you supported this. If you think making an issue out of this will help anything, you are wrong. You'll just shift the focus of oppression to the previous oppressors,, you'll scream for blood, demand justice, and before you know it you will discover your champions and elected leaders are as guilty as the previous oppressors.

The answer is not to stand up and fight, but to roll over and serve. Take accountability for your offense of living in the U.S. or any other democratic and free nation, for it is your comfort and way of life that keeps the rest of the world down. Go to those parts of the world that you have wronged by being born into your culture and serve them.

Make no mistake, you can not solve this problem or bring peace on earth with your enlightened thinking, but you can do your part to not stoke this fire of evil with your own hate.

Senate Report Says Torture Program Was More Gruesome, Widespread Than CIA Claimed

The study reveals several gruesome instances of torture by mid-level CIA officers who participated in the program, including threats of sexual violence using a broomstick and the use of "rectal hydration" in instances of harsh interrogations that lasted for days or weeks on end. And, contrary to the agency's prior insistence that only three detainees were subject to waterboarding, the Senate report suggests it was likely used on more detainees.

SOURCE

I guess it's open season on all Military combatants from here on in. Rule book..we dont need no stinkin rule book.

As for the Pics in the OP...Seen them all years ago so nothing new has been added as far as pics of what went/goes on, but then again, some of the pics could just not be added because some people might get upset and have 30 minutes of their lives disrupted as a result...

Well ok, maybe not a whole 30 minutes, just long enough til they be distracted by shiny things.

So how many of yous would feel devestated if you found out that your son or daughter was given an order to inflict such pain on another while in the service?? or take nude photos of prisoners?? to act with such cruelity?
I'm sorry but I have to ask
just what kind of damage does this do to the ones who received the orders?
many of whom were national guardsmen and women who really never thought they would see combat on foreign soil.

Bottom line for me is torture is against the constitution of the United States and the Geneva conventions. It doesn't matter who it is to detain indefinitely and torture with no charges or legal representation is totally illegal and criminal. And captured enemy combatants or prisoners of war should be treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions. The Nazis, Russians and Japanese treated POWs like this in WW2 and America is better than this. This new report shows torture doesn't work because hurt someone enough for long enough and they will tell you they're Elvis. No useful intelligence was obtained. If they are real terrorists put them on trial for crimes in an international court like the Nazis got after WW2 and if guilty life or execution. We should not be dragged down to their barbaric level. We don't torture murderers or criminals and that is all they are. Once again the CIA shows it's incompetence and unprofessionalism and in this case criminal behaviour.

a reply to: JimTSpock

What gets me is that they've known that torture doesn't work for decades - but they still did it. Why? Beats me. Perhaps they thought that 'modern' methods and 'modern' theories would work. They were wrong.
But what really enrages me is scum like Cheney smirking about it. That man is a pathological menace.

originally posted by: The Shade
The only way to get information is to torture these days. There are other ways but torture is the most effective as it pushes the body to its limits so you have no other choice to tell who ever it is what ever it is you were hiding.
I agree sometimes the methods are a bit over the top and possibly not needed but there is nothing we can do about it... Let the government use their techniques!

so you are calling senator John McCain a lair when he says torture doesn't work?......apparently you haven't been exposed to torture like he was....but, you know what your talking bout.

originally posted by: Divinorumus
If these creeps had murdered your son or daughter in cold blood, would you still weep for these sacks of scum? Torture not only can extract information, it serves as a deterrent to those that are thinking about committing cold blooded murder in the future. Let those pictures serve as a warning to others that think they have nothing to fear or loose when they murder the innocent in the name of whatever b.s. they believe and feel justifies their acts and actions.

More pictures to be release, eh? GOOD!

[edit on 24-4-2009 by Divinorumus]

Your sick..............

1) Your constitution forbids torture

2) 26 of these tortured people were shown to be INNOCENT and picked up by mistake.

Number 2 if the key here! Without rules and due process the government abused such power to harm INNOCENT people alongside the terrorists.

You cheer and say you dont care.......well what if your son or daughter get picked up accidentally by mistake?

a reply to: jaamaan

These are the guys that planned and executed 9/11 and
several of the other 22,586 terrorist attacks over the past
thirty years, RIGHT?????????

Torture is fine as a means of extracting intelligence.

originally posted by: recapitulated
a reply to: jaamaan

Torture is fine as a means of extracting intelligence.

Torture is an incredibly unreliable way of getting information. It's also incredibly stupid.

originally posted by: Divinorumus
If these creeps had murdered your son or daughter in cold blood, would you still weep for these sacks of scum? Torture not only can extract information, it serves as a deterrent to those that are thinking about committing cold blooded murder in the future. Let those pictures serve as a warning to others that think they have nothing to fear or loose when they murder the innocent in the name of whatever b.s. they believe and feel justifies their acts and actions.

More pictures to be release, eh? GOOD!

[edit on 24-4-2009 by Divinorumus]

We talk about evolution and how much we human have progressed. What a bunch of crap. We are brutal animals. Who Call Our selves human.
But what we do to eachother is sick.

Torture will never stop because we will never evolve from what we really are.

we are controlled by those that have the wealth and power to decide. we are allowed to protest, so long as that wealth and power is not threatened.

originally posted by: AngryCymraeg

originally posted by: recapitulated
a reply to: jaamaan

Torture is fine as a means of extracting intelligence.

Torture is an incredibly unreliable way of getting information. It's also incredibly stupid.

These are the guys that planned and executed 9/11 and
several of the other 22,586 terrorist attacks over the past
thirty years, RIGHT????????