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The US Army knows: Torture doesnt even actually work, either

 
 
nimh
 
Reply Wed 27 Sep, 2006 04:56 pm
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Type: Discussion • Score: 5 • Views: 3,497 • Replies: 18
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Wed 27 Sep, 2006 05:47 pm
I'm also going to borrow this from a post of Revel's in the Democrats' gloating thread:

Quote:
Eight Lessons of Torture

1. Torture does not yield reliable information

Well-trained interrogators, within the military, the FBI, and the police have testified that torture does not work, is unreliable and distracting from the hard work of interrogation. Nearly every client at the Center for Victims of Torture, when subjected to torture, confessed to a crime they did not commit, gave up extraneous information, or supplied names of innocent friends or colleagues to their torturers. It is a great source of shame for our clients, who tell us they would have said anything their tormentors wanted them to say in order to get the pain to stop. Such extraneous information distracts, rather than supports, valid investigations.

2. Torture does not yield information quickly

Although eventually everyone will confess to something, it takes a lot of time. We know that many militaries and radical groups train their members to resist torture and to pass along false pieces of information during the process. And those with strong religious or political beliefs that help them understand the purposes of torture used against them are most able to resist and to recover from its impact.

3. Torture will not be used only against the guilty

Inherent in all of the scenario building is the assumption that we know, with great reliability, that we have the appropriate party who possesses knowledge that could save lives. But our clients are living testimony that once used, torture becomes a fishing expedition to find information. It perverts the system which, seeking shortcuts to the hard work of investigation, relies increasingly on torture. The estimate from the Red Cross was that at least 80 percent of those imprisoned at Abu Ghraib, for example, should never have been arrested, but were there because it was easier to arrest persons than to let them go (people feared letting go a terrorist more than protecting the innocent). The Israeli security system claimed to use its stress and duress techniques only where they had the most reliable information about the detainee's guilt. Yet human rights monitors estimate that they were used on over 8000 detainees. It is not credible to believe they had this precise information about so many.

4. Torture has a corrupting effect on the perpetrator

The relationship between the victim and the torturer is highly intimate, even if one-sided. It is filled with stress for the interrogator, balancing the job with the moral and ethical values of a person with family and friends. One way this cognitive dissonance is managed is through a group process that dehumanizes the victim. But still another way is to insure that some sort of confession is obtained to justify to the interrogator and to his superiors that pain and suffering was validly used.

5. Torture has never been confined to narrow conditions

Torture has often been justified by reference to a small number of people who know about the "ticking time bomb," but in practice, it has always been extended to a much wider population.

6. Psychological torture is damaging

When torture is defined as strictly a physical act, many believe that psychological coercion is okay. CVT's clients say it was the psychological forms of torture that were the most debilitating over a long period. The source of their nightmares, 15 and 20 years later, was the mock executions or hearing others being tortured. The lack of self-esteem and depression were more related to scenarios of humiliation, consciously structured to demean the victim. Many within the world treatment movement believe we have seen increasingly sophisticated forms of psychological torture over the past 20 years.

7. Stress and duress techniques are forms of torture

Many of these techniques were developed during Israel's struggle against terrorism, and so this example is often cited for effective interrogation techniques falling short of torture. But the Israeli Supreme Court concluded that they were illegitimate. Every democratic nation's court system and international court which has reviewed them has concluded that they are forms of torture.

8. We cannot use torture and still retain the moral high ground

The arguments we hear are not so different in form and content from those used by the repressive governments of CVT's clients, and which the U.S. has refused to accept from other nations that have used torture to combat their real or perceived enemies. Torture is not an effective or efficient producer of reliable information. But it is effective and efficient at producing fear and rage, both in the individuals tortured and in their broader communities.
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Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Wed 27 Sep, 2006 05:50 pm
Can I put this here?

Quote:
Statement by the President - June, 2003
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice.

Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors. Until recently, Saddam Hussein used similar means to hide the crimes of his regime. With Iraq's liberation, the world is only now learning the enormity of the dictator's three decades of victimization of the Iraqi people. Across the country, evidence of Baathist atrocities is mounting, including scores of mass graves containing the remains of thousands of men, women, and children and torture chambers hidden inside palaces and ministries. The most compelling evidence of all lies in the stories told by torture survivors, who are recounting a vast array of sadistic acts perpetrated against the innocent. Their testimony reminds us of their great courage in outlasting one of history's most brutal regimes, and it reminds us that similar cruelties are taking place behind the closed doors of other prison states.

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims' treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.

No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission.


Seems... I don't know... relevant

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Wed 27 Sep, 2006 06:29 pm
Yesh... <sighs>
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Wed 27 Sep, 2006 07:07 pm
sorry, sorry, didn't mean to get all partisan on ya

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Wed 27 Sep, 2006 07:21 pm
It's never occurred to me that torture works. in any quantifiable way. Why would anyone think it does?


I see all this as some sort of torture balloon going on, horrible beyond my own contemplation, the horror to little avail. What a waste of a country with some principles from time to time in the past.
DrewDad
 
  2  
Reply Thu 28 Sep, 2006 07:39 am
Torture rooms are just playgrounds for sadists... they have no legitimate purpose.
0 Replies
 
blacksmithn
 
  1  
Reply Thu 28 Sep, 2006 08:10 am
DrewDad wrote:
Torture rooms are just playgrounds for sadists... they have no legitimate purpose.


On the contrary, they seem to give the rightwing a rallying point to prove once again that they-- the self-annointed defenders of "freedom" (a freedom defined by themselves, naturally, and which does not apparently include the freedom to criticize their unAmerican ways)-- and only they are toughminded and hardnosed enough to be entrusted with the conduct of this eternal war against "terror."

That the horrific irony of using torture to combat terror escapes them speaks volumes.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  2  
Reply Thu 28 Sep, 2006 08:18 am
Re: The US Army knows: Torture doesnt even actually work, ei
nimh wrote:
While the President was busy safeguarding the right of the US intelligence services to use torture, it was up to the Army to state that, not only is torture wrong, but it actually causes more harm than good, and moreover: it doesnt even actually work.

There's an important issue this article isn't addressing: Why does the US Army hate America?
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Thu 28 Sep, 2006 09:31 am
Cycloptichorn wrote:
sorry, sorry, didn't mean to get all partisan on ya

No, no no, you misunderstand. I was sighing at the sadness of it all. Your post was very a propos.
0 Replies
 
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Thu 28 Sep, 2006 02:41 pm
Re: The US Army knows: Torture doesnt even actually work, ei
Thomas wrote:
nimh wrote:
While the President was busy safeguarding the right of the US intelligence services to use torture, it was up to the Army to state that, not only is torture wrong, but it actually causes more harm than good, and moreover: it doesnt even actually work.

There's an important issue this article isn't addressing: Why does the US Army hate America?



Ha!
0 Replies
 
blueflame1
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Sep, 2006 07:37 am
http://cagle.msnbc.com/working/060927/matson.gif
0 Replies
 
FreeDuck
 
  2  
Reply Fri 29 Sep, 2006 10:45 am
Bookmarking.

I'm very saddened that Congress caved and gave Bush the power to interpret the Geneva conventions and removed pretty much any punishment for those who violate them. Giving that power over to someone with a history of very creative interpretations of the law is just a disaster waiting to happen. I can just hear weasley Gonzalez explaining how "coercion" and torture are two completely different things.

I'm so disappointed in McCain and Warner -- especially McCain. I'm pretty sure that the CIA has been using torture before now and will continue to do so, but can we just go back to pretending that we think it's wrong?
0 Replies
 
DrewDad
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Sep, 2006 10:58 am
Sadly, the Republicans will authorize torture in hopes of being able to embarass those opposed to torture in political ads.

I used to think the US had ideals; now I just think the US has creeps.
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 9 Dec, 2007 08:50 pm
0 Replies
 
Ramafuchs
 
  -1  
Reply Mon 18 Aug, 2008 04:17 pm
@Thomas,
There's an important issue this article isn't addressing: Why does the US Army hate America?
There is yet another vital issue which had not drawn attention in the above article.
"Why Soldiers Rape"
• A 2004 study of veterans from Vietnam and all wars since, conducted by psychotherapist Maureen Murdoch and published in the journal Military Medicine, found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving.

• In 2003, a survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the first Gulf War by psychologist Anne Sadler and her colleagues, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military.

• And a 1995 study of female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars, also conducted by Murdoch and published in Archives of Family Medicine, reported that 90 percent had been sexually harassed, which means anything from being pressured for sex to being relentlessly teased and stared at.

• A 2007 survey by the Department of Veterans Affairs found that homelessness among female veterans is rapidly increasing as women soldiers come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Forty percent of these homeless female veterans say they were sexually abused while in the service.

Defense Department numbers are much lower. In Fiscal Year 2007, the Pentagon reported 2,085 sexual assaults among military women, which given that there are about 200,000 active-duty women in the armed forces, is a mere fraction of what the veterans studies indicate. The discrepancy can be explained by the fact that the Pentagon counts only those rapes that soldiers have officially reported.

Having the courage to report a rape is hard enough for civilians, where unsympathetic police, victim-blaming myths, and the fear of reprisal prevent some 60 percent of rapes from being brought to light, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study

Of the 40 or so female veterans I have interviewed over the past two years, all but two said they were constantly sexually harassed by their comrades while they were serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, and many told me that the men were worse in groups than they were individually. Air Force Sgt. Marti Ribeiro, for example, told me that she was relentlessly harassed for all eight years of her service, both in training and during her deployments in 2003 and 2006:

the military has an abysmal record when it comes to catching, prosecuting and punishing its rapists. The Pentagon’s 2007 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military found that 47 percent of the reported sexual assaults in 2007 were dismissed as unworthy of investigation, and only about 8 percent of the cases went to court-martial, reflecting the difficulty female soldiers have in making themselves heard or believed when they report sexual assault within the military. The majority of assailants were given what the Pentagon calls “nonjudicial punishments, administrative actions and discharges.” By contrast, in civilian life, 40 percent of those accused of sex crimes are prosecuted.

Which brings us to the question: Do the reasons soldiers rape have anything to do with the nature of the wars we are waging today, particularly in Iraq?
many American troops in Iraq have deliberately shot children, raped civilian women and teenagers, tortured prisoners of war, and abused their own comrades because they see no moral justification for the war, and are reduced to nothing but self-loathing, anger, fear and hatred.

Although these explanations for why soldiers rape are dispiriting, they do at least suggest that the military could institute the following reforms:

• Promote and honor more women soldiers. The more respect women are shown by the command, the less abuse they will get from their comrades.

• Teach officers and enlistees that rape is torture and a war crime.

• Expel men from the military who attack their female comrades.

• Ban the consumption of pornography.

• Prohibit the use of sexist language by drill instructors.

• Educate officers to insist that women be treated with respect.

• Train military counselors to help male and female soldiers not only with war trauma, but also with childhood abuse and sexual assault.

• Cease admitting soldiers with backgrounds of domestic or sexual violen
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3848/why_soldiers_rape/

0 Replies
 
Ramafuchs
 
  -1  
Reply Mon 18 Aug, 2008 07:17 pm
@DrewDad,
Who ever dreamed that we'd see the day when pundits and politicians would be debating whether torture really "works" or not. How low can we go? That kind of hairsplitting just proves that the country is already in the toilet. Its a pretty straightforward proposition if you think about it; countries that torture people are the enemies of human rights, democratic values and conventional standards of acceptable behavior. That's the long-winded way of saying that they're sickos. Just take a look at the photos from Abu Ghraib again; men dressed up in women's panties or stacked up naked in human pyramids. Some fun, eh? It's sick! The pyramid picture tells you everything you need to know about modern-day America.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20541.htm
0 Replies
 
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Mon 18 Aug, 2008 07:24 pm
@ossobuco,
My wife is a leader in Army Human intelligence, she attests to the fact that torture does not work, she will say that almost all Army Human Intelligence soldiers know this and thus don't use it. It was the CIA who did almost all of the torture, with their teams that had the right to take control of any prisoner they wanted to talk to.
0 Replies
 
democritus
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Jan, 2011 05:38 pm
I am amazed the quality of discussion on this topic and thank you all for the valuable information you have brought to our attention.

Yes, torture is a menace to humanity fuelled by the Machiavellian politicians and their advisers - there is no shortages of Professors of Philosophy amongst them. [One of them is Seumas Miller, Professor of Philosophy at Charles Sturt University and the Australian National University. See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/ ].

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