Revealed: victims of UK's cold war torture camp

I'm not having a pop on you at all, Lord Ellpus, but I misread your post - should have done a proper reading and not only a glancing at the text.

Sorry for that

BM

We all hate it. We all know it is awful. We all do it. It will always be done.

does that make it ok then lash?

Why is that even asked?

I'm just saying it is a fact. I didn't place any value judgment on it.

Peopole act as though they're surprised that it is universally practiced.

Some people have a problem when they are in a position of power. They cannot deal with others who are defenseless.

It happens in the home, abusive husbands. It happens when men rape women. It happens to policemen, excessive force. It happens in the armed forces, disregard of rules.

These cowardly acts are usually committed by not-too-bright people or by sadists who happen to be in uniform.

Torture is among the worst crimes imaginable.

I saw the pictures in the Guardian - horrible story. Shocking, yes. I dont think anything like that happened in (democratic) Western Europe after that time - tho there were the sackings of thousands of people over their (suspected) far-left sympathies in Germany during the RAF scare. Still, wholly different category.


No "possibly" about it; they were. They were held and tortured for having been a member of the Communist Party, or being suspect for returning from a POW camp in the Soviet Union or, in one case, for having left East-Germany himself but being the son of an ardent GDR communist.


But the irony of course was that the people who were tortured included people who had actually resisted those savage Nazis; there was one man who had managed to survive all through the Nazi regime as a communist organiser - only to then fall in the hands of these British interrogators... mindboggling.

Well I agree that some peopole are surprised. Not so much by the moral depravity of them but of us.

Who are employed by much more intelligent people to do their dirty work. When a state uses torture against "enemies of the state" it demeans us all. The pro-torture camp argue that its necessary in extreme circumstances. But in practice it doesnt work like that. Torture becomes routine. The quality of the information is nearly always compromised by the method of extracting it. Moreover torture alone is highly unlikely to thwart a terrorist outrage if such a thing is being prepared. Finally if the aim of the terrorists is to destroy liberal democracy, are we not helping them do this when we resort to such methods as torture?

Steve wrote:
Who are employed by much more intelligent people to do their dirty work.
..................
When general Miller imported his tactics from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib, the torture really started to increase.

http://www.talkleft.com/new_archives/006415.html