Donald Trump still loves torture

boing
41

You need to read this stuff more carefully. The very memo you’re citing says right there that only categories I and II were fully allowed, and the only item permitted from the dreaded category III is stuff like poking in the chest with a finger. If you really think this is “torture” then folks like yourself should have made a bigger deal of it months earlier so that Trump could have won even more states.

Whatever you want to think about Rumsfeld’s questioning of the four-hour limit to standing, the fact remains that this is ultimately the legal limit that he had imposed.

You are really making my point beautifully: Legal arguments over torture are really about where we should draw the line. You think an interrogator poking in the chest with a finger is waaaaaaaaaaaay over that line. Some people feel the line should be drawn differently.

You shouldn’t be talking about military culture. Look at that document again. Those are the regulations that they set. Soldiers were punished for violating them. The guards at Abu Ghraib were charged before you’d heard about these incidents. The pictures were leaked by one of their family members as a threat to get the DoD to drop those charges. The only reason you’ve seen those pictures is because the charges were not dropped. They don’t see this as a sleazy fundraising opportunity the way the ACLU does.

BTW: “Enhanced interrogation” was a CIA term. I know that critics like to conflate that with what the DoD did, but they’re completely different. The DoD never called it that, and the options were vastly different. I’m sure some military members might have used the term, but they were watching too much 24.

42

Nah… he just makes it look cool, exciting, and necessary on TV…

8 Likes
43

You need to read the subtext if you think Rumsfeld wasn’t creating a culture that condoned torture. He read a memo saying “here are some of the harsh and terrible things we’re doing to break the will of detainees” and his response was “Why can’t we do anything harsher?”

This was not a man making an effort to reign in the excesses of his subordinates or create an atmosphere of respect for the human rights of detainees.

11 Likes
44

No, you are wrong.

Torture is always wrong. Torture is always evil. Circumstances do not matter. Even your fantasies about the tickling time bomb do not matter. What kind of person would argue for “sort of torture some of the time but only if it’s really okay?”

10 Likes
45

How is it that you think the reservist guards at Abu Ghraib caught wind of this mysterious subtext when neither the generals nor the Army CID agents who’d put the hammer down on Abu Ghraib had spotted it?

I have to admit that I’d love to see the ACLU bring Rumsfeld to trial based on this subtext.

You’re reaching too hard. Maybe you’ve been watching 24, not realizing it was a TV show.

46

You’re in error. I oppose torture. I oppose torture even if it might stop another 9/11 and save thousands of lives.

But once we say that, what about something less than torture? For example, how about acting mean, screaming at them, and poking them in the chest with a finger? How about letting them sleep only four hours a night? Or how about letting them get eight hours of sleep per night, but waking them up a couple times each night?

Yes, there’s also the CIA’s waterboarding of three detainees, and their extreme sleep deprivation of a few more. Some would say the military’s limits could be okay, but the CIA’s would not. But nobody here was willing to say that, which is why we go back to poking in the chest with a finger and limiting sleep to four hours a night.

And all of that is beside what our enemies do. People have forgotten what real torture is.

I understand that some people then like to switch and say that rough interrogation doesn’t work. If true (and the Senate’s “Torture Report” does not actually say that) then I’d be agreeing with you. This is only about if it could achieve results when nothing else does.

I’d rather use rough techniques than bomb too many houses. But that’s me.

47

Please. Enlighten us.

Paint for us a nice, clear red line for where “rough techniques” end and where “real torture” begins.

11 Likes
49

A slap on the wrist for a handful of low level military grunts while letting all higher-level officers and private contractors off the hook entirely isn’t exactly what I’d categorize as “putting down the hammer.” More like “finding a scapegoat.”

5 Likes
50

For “The Culture” to remain a beautiful utopia, do it needs the horrors of “Special Circumstances”?

51

Maybe it’s just me, but why not neither?

12 Likes
52

IMPOSSIBLE

Such a thing cannot be.

53

“Real torture”? Your head is twisted so far up your ass that you’re confusing cruelty for empathy. I have never experienced any form of torture, but when I imagine someone who has reading the posts that you have made throughout this thread… I begin to lose faith in humanity, knowing that I share my species with people like you.

You are not in a position to tell anyone who has experienced any kind of torment committed with the purpose of harming them physically or mentally what is and isn’t torture. At some point I highly recommend that you learn how to feel empathy, but since that clearly isn’t going to happen in the near future: Please fuck off.

10 Likes
54

Let’s see…

nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

You can’t kill people, you can’t lock them up, and you can’t take their things without due process of law. You can torture them, however. Unfortunately, they keep running away while you’re doing it, because you can’t deprive them of their liberty in order to torture them. There’s no “due process of law” that would allow that. Any process of law that facilitates torture would not be “due process”. Still, there are plenty of ways to torture people by following them around all the time.

nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,

That means you can torture suspected terrorists (by running after them) in order to gain information about other people’s terrorist plans. You can’t torture them to get information about their own plans, because that would be compelling them to witness against themselves. Unless, technically, you change the law so that terrorist acts are no longer a crime, then the Fifth Amendment wouldn’t apply anymore.

The definition of torture does not depend on which party is in power in the US. At some times, there might be people in power in the US that try to excuse some methods of torture. But I’m sure the leaders of North Korea are perfectly willing to excuse several forms of torture, and that doesn’t change the definition of “torture”, either.

5 Likes
55

He got his crowd to chant “Lock her up” at a thank you rally on Thursday.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/politics/donald-trump-thank-you-tour/

3 Likes
56

Oh boy.

The USA has signed and ratified Convention Against Torture (an international treaty):

Article 1

  1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
    (…)

Article 16

  1. Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article I, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture of references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

International treaties are binding for domestic US law:

"A self-executing treaty provision is the supreme law of the land in the same sense as a federal statute that is judicially enforceable by private parties. Even a non-self-executing provision of an international agreement represents an international obligation that courts are very much inclined to protect against encroachment by local, state or federal law. "

International Agreements and U.S. Law

Even though the UN Convention Against Torture is a non-self-executing treaty it was implemented in the US through legislation (specifically, CFR 8):
8 CFR 208.18 - Implementation of the Convention Against Torture.

13 Likes
57

You oppose what you call torture.
And you vastly exaggerate its usefulness.

But you refine the term “torture” to apply to a much narrower range of atrocities than other people. As you have already come to the evidence-free conclusion that torture might save thousands of lives, it becomes thus a lot easier for you to jump to the conclusion that what you refer to as “something less than torture” is therefore somehow morally justified.

Considered a form of torture in all civilized countries. (Don’t bother to look for counterexamples, rejection of all forms of torture is part of the definition of civilized).

Then you talk about “our enemies”, and how they do more evil things than you. Well, I hope they are evil. Or why else would you consider them your enemy?

Well, before we talk about whether it works, let’s agree on what to call it. I would have proposed to just call it “torture”, but as you want to say you’re opposed to torture, I see we need a more nuanced set of terms. So, for now, I’ll consent to limiting the use of the word “torture” to what you call “torture”. But let’s not call it “rough interrogation”, let’s use the original term: “verschärfte Vernehmung”.

http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte-vernehmung/228158/

So, using this euphemism, I see that you are not in favor of torture, just in favor of verschärfte Vernehmung. Seventy years ago, the consensus in the civilized world was already that it is not acceptable. Back then, the civilized world was still mostly in favor of capital punishment, so people who performed verschärfte Vernehmung were executed when they were caught after the war.

Now, does verschärfte Vernehmung help? The evidence is mostly against it, but there might be a few situations where it is theoretically possible. Those situations would include a ticking bomb scenario, where the victim is known beyond doubt to possess important information, that information is required quickly and can also be verified quickly. Otherwise, you’ll just get worthless information.
Anyway, that doesn’t really matter, because there is already a widespread global consensus that verschärfte Vernehmung, which everyone else calls torture, is evil. If some people in some country question that consensus, even if it is the US president himself, that doesn’t change anything. Evil people seldom agree that what they’re doing is evil.

Sure, if that false dichotomy were the question, my answer would be the same.
Usually, torture won’t get you to avoid bombing more houses, it will just get you another list of people. People whose houses you can bomb, or who you can snatch off the street and torture.
In general, I disapprove of justifying a war crime (torture / verschärfte Vernehmung) because there is a theory that under some circumstances committing it might help you achieve the goals of the other war crime you were committing (such as the war crime of aggression).

11 Likes
58

A scapegoat for a subtext?

That sounds like a fun excuse for another ACLU fundraising ploy.

59

Using a German name and associating it with the Gestapo may sound cute to Andrew Sullivan but it doesn’t help when you look at the history. We don’t particularly remember or hate the Nazis for using these types of techniques. They were made for use on German citizens during what was then still peacetime. A Polish Jew a few years later could expect things to be whole lot worse, which is really what we remember Nazis for.

Andrew Sullivan had also lauded WWII British interrogator Lieutenant Colonel Robert “Tin Eye” Stephens, who had also opposed torture on the grounds that it didn’t work. Stephens insisted that he didn’t use torture, and Sullivan liked to hear that – until he found out the rest of the story. Instead, Stephens used techniques much like what people complain about now. He didn’t do waterboarding as our CIA did, but did go a number of steps further in that he threatened execution if their subjects still didn’t talk. A few of ours in this war did threaten execution, but were sent home for violating the rules. The British actually followed through. German bombs every night made that easy. Our enemies’ bombs now usually only strike civilians thousands of miles from here. That makes it easy to want to be nicer.

Stephens kept at it after the war, but got in trouble after then doing it on communist prisoners. The critics came out again, some because they felt safe again with the war over, and some out of sympathies for Stalin. It really is a matter of timing.

60

I’ll try to put this in the simplest terms I can:

I’m not saying that particular memo was directly responsible for every act of torture that happened on Rumsfeld’s watch. I’m saying that memo is a telling illustration of Rumsfeld’s attitude toward detainee abuse, an attitude that trickled from the top down through his various subordinates and contributed to a culture that tolerated and enabled torture on a systemic level.

You keep referring to the systemic use of torture under Rumsfeld and the Bush administration that way. That’s about as clueless and tactless as describing the use of fire-hoses and attack dogs on civil rights protesters as “a fundraising ploy for the NAACP.” Nobody is making these abuses up. If you’re not condemning these acts and the leaders who allowed them to happen then there’s something seriously wrong with your sense of justice.

12 Likes
61

It’s almost like the ACLU exists to protect the integrity of America from its enemies within or somethin’.

9 Likes