Why does stuff like this keep happening? To a lot of people, it seems mild, no big deal, maybe even funny, but to the people going through it it is as bad as being raped. It is a violation. What the hell do these people hope to accomplish with these tactics? Are they TRYING to create an environment for terrorism to thrive in? This makes me so angry, and there's not even a thing I can do about it or against the sort of people who would allow things like this to happen.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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And this is a bad form of interrogation compared to? Beating the prisoners? How about the Chinese water torture? The iron maiden? The rack? Burning their feet?
Oh, how about how these men treat women in their home countries? A burkha anyone? It's the latest fashion! How about how they beat their wives or just women in general who tried to work outside the home or were caught exposing even the tiniest parts of their bodies? How about taking a look at how the Taliban treated women? How about how many women were executed for their transgressions of just trying to be women in control of their own lives?
So, some interrogators decided to use these people's aversion to women and their bodies, against them. They used them to say, "Hey, here's a woman who is superior to you" because that would bother these ultra-chauvinists deeply.
This is pretty minor compared to what they would and have done to our people who have been captured. Remember the lady from CARE who was beheaded?
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Please. No one said they were right to think and behave this way. But they are still human beings, for God's sake ! What these women do is called sexual harrassment, and would be bad even if that wasn't against people they knew would be horrified by such behavious ! It is torture, of course !
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I argue that it's not really torture, it's just turning the tables on them and using an advantage that is hard-wired into these people.
But hey, they'd rather keep their information to themselves and shield people who willingly kill innocents. Might I point you to an opera house in Russia or a small elementary school in southern Russia.
Perhaps I can point you to some tapes of the World Trade Center towers collapsing?
Oh but we aren't showing respect for their religion? How about some footage of the Taliban destroying the giant buddha statues carved into the Afghan mountainside?
Or how about their treatment of the American Christian women who were arrested by the Taliban while the women were provided aid work before the war?
Yeah, this kind of "torture" isn't getting them any sympathy from me.
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Are the people tortured proven guilty ? I don't think so. And, I'm sorry, but you can't justify violence you do to someone by the fact that he has been violent himself, or if not him, his brother ! They are human beings ! They have rights ! Or do you want to throw away the human rights declaration too ?
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"This is pretty minor compared to what they would and have done to our people who have been captured."
Leaving aside the automatic presumption of guilt, I should point out that justifying evil by saying that it's less evil than what other evil people would do is hardly a compelling argument.
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Well, hey, let's just ask nicely and I'll bet they'll tell us everything they know... and that will likely fix all those issues we've had with gathering good intelligence, too.
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Yes, irony, that's an answer, yes ? I'm just asking a little reflexion about ethic and human rights before torturing anyone, but that seems too much. Do you think that someone innocent wouldn't tell anything he's asked to tell under torture ? I know I would ! That attitude makes me sick, especially - and it's often - when it come for religious people who say life is sacred, but are willing to do anything to someone as long as they don't identify him as human - foreigner, for exemple, people from other religions, or someone suspected - and I underline suspected - of terrorism !
[ January 28, 2005, 09:52 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
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Oh for crying out loud...whether terrorists or not, whether they're wrong and we're right, aren't we supposed to be the good guys here? Wasn't the US orignally one of the countries that supported the Geneva Convention? Didn't we help write the damn thing? But now we get to break it 'cause it's convienient. Sometimes I wonder that anyone is surprised that they hate us.
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You see, its okay, since we're the good guys. If the evil bad guys had done something of rough cross cultural moral equivalence, like raping (men and women) prisoners, they would be evil, because they're the bad guys.
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Jim-Me: Because the answers from people being tortured are known to be oh so much more useful to the intelligence community. One reason torture's gone out of style is because, as an interrogation technique, it just doesn't work very well.
These things were done for sadistic purposes, and I am ashamed.
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Oh, please. While not defending the actions specified in the link, equating this with rape is ridiculous. Go spend some time at a rape crisis center before making such comparisons.
So I'll simply add that I know people who went through worse than this in survival training... I went through worse than some of it myself.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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It doesn't equal rape to us. To them, rape is likely considered not as bad (edit: not necessarily, but likely, based on where they are from and their cultural backgrounds. further edit: and that's not necessarily even saying rape is good to them, just that this is really, really bad), at least rape of women.
Not saying they're right, but if we're talking about emotional impact (and thus emotional stress), we're probably talking on the level of rape.
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Jim-Me: people voluntarily throw themselves on grenades. Does this mean it would be okay to blow these prisoners up?
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I wonder if there'd be such an uproar if the interrogaters were, say, putting them in bacon body wraps or something. That would make them ritually unclean and "unable to go before their God for help" too, wouldn't it?
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If their emotional reaction was as violent, and the people who make this aware of the violence of the reaction, then yes, it would be the same.
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Well, you have to admit, even the mention of 'bacon body wraps' is slightly, um...amusing. However, what's being done to them is hardly amusing to anyone, I would hope.
*EDIT* For phrasing.
[ January 28, 2005, 10:11 AM: Message edited by: Human ]
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quote:It doesn't equal rape to us. To them, rape is likely considered not as bad (edit: not necessarily, but likely, based on where they are from and their cultural backgrounds), at least rape of women.
Well then, your comparison wasn't very accurate. In trying to relate their perception of the event to ours, as "rough cross cultural moral equivalence" indicates, then we should be using our standards of rape and their standards of the behavior described in the link. If they have a lesser view of rape, and view this as the equivalent of rape, then they view it as less than how we view rape.
quote:The female interrogator wanted to "break him," Saar adds, describing how she removed her uniform top to expose a tight-fitting T-shirt and began taunting the detainee, touching her breasts, rubbing them against the prisoner's back and commenting on his apparent erection.
The detainee looked up and spat in her face, the manuscript recounts.
The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.
Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a man's wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean.
"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," says the draft, stamped "Secret."
The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes.
"She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee," he says. "As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred.
"She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward" — so fiercely that he broke loose from one ankle shackle.
"He began to cry like a baby," the draft says, noting the interrogator left saying, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."
Even in the US this would be termed extreme emotional abuse, and his reaction is remarkably like that of some women I know who have been raped.
And yes, we should be using our conception of rape and their conception of this. Which is why I would put them at rough equivalence. Rape in this country is shoved under the seat, and there is intense cultural pressure for women who are raped to feel ashamed of it and not reveal it. As a country as a whole, we unfortunately don't think much of rape. I bet I could take an anonymous survey and find large percentages of people who thought that if someone was raped it was partially his or her, particularly her, fault.
Compared to how this country thinks of rape and how awful it is, what happened to this man is awful in just about the same way.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I said this in their culture would be about the equivalent of rape in our culture, and then later said that in their culture this would probably be worse than rape. Nothing inconsistent, Dag.
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Is it sexual and religious harassment? sure. Is it disrespectful? absolutely. Against the Geneva Convention? possibly... but not being members of a flagged army, they don't qualify... sorry, but it's a fact... specifically there to discourage terrorist activity.
Is it torture? not so much.
Perhaps one of the reasons I feel so little pity for this is that I am one of the few people who has here defended some of the "misogyny" of Islam. These men are tortured, not by our interrogators, but by their own hateful twisting of a belief system intended to protect and value women, not subjugate them. They are hoist on their own petard and those who live by a thing often die by it, too.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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As a woman and a human being, I feel frustrated, offended and angry that a culture/part of a culture views menstruation as inherently unclean.
As a woman and a human being I also feel that such actions as were taken were immoral, cruel and akin to, if not equivalent to torture.
It's not the same as rape. I don't even agree with the perception that sees such blood as unclean. But it still isn't right. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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It seems like one of their main interrogation tactics is to make the prisoners ritually unclean, and otherwise exploit powerful religious and cultural taboos to psychologically weaken them. I think most people agreed, when the Abu Ghraib (sp?) scandal broke, that sexual humiliation of the prisoners is wrong, and many people seem to think that what these female interrogators are doing is wrong, but does it become any less wrong when the emotional distress is caused in a non-sexually-suggestive way, such as my half-joke about bacon body wraps?
edit: hit submit before I meant to. If exploiting the anti-pork taboo is just as wrong as smearing them with menstrual blood, then what techniques could be used? What would be some valid, permissible tactics for extracting information from the prisoners that wouldn't constitute torture?
posted
Okay, so...let me get this straight here. Because they believe in a radical and ultra-conservative sect of Islam, they deserve to be tortured?
...well, at least I'm glad that our soldiers, at least, are safe, 'cause they wear our flag on their uniforms. They couldn't possibly be tortured then. But you bad people who don't play by the rules and wear flags, you're screwed!
*EDIT* -To Jim-me (Y'all post too fast.)
[ January 28, 2005, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: Human ]
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Torture is not judged by the host culture's values, but by the emotional and physical impact on the one possibly being tortured, the former being determined by that person's values.
You look at this transcript and tell me this person was not tortured? I thought more of you.
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Human, if you are going to put words in my mouth I'll just absent myself and make it easier for you.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Jim-me, I apologize. It's just that...I get horribly frustrated when arguments like this come around. I have the weird trait of seeing this as humans doing something to other humans, not 'us' doing something to the 'enemy'. I don't agree with you, not at all...but I shouldn't mock your viewpoint.
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quote: , 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
The defintion of torture from the Convention Against Torture - both a customary and conventional international law norm.
It seems the acts detailed would fall in the definition.
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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So what are we supposed to do, then? Just ask them nicely and hope they'll be honest with us? I certainly don't want to condone torture, but isn't there anything the interrogators could do to get information/cooperation/whatever from the captives?
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There are generally considered exceptions for reasons of practicality; in part, I believe most conventions specifically state such things which are allowed, such as imprisonment.
However, I predict smearing people's faces with fake menstrual blood and preventing them from washing is neither mentioned as an exception nor considered by any practicing states an exception for reasons of practicality.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Perhaps if some people were to voice their opinions instead of striking a pose to talk about others this thread would be more productive.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I think I'm confused...would someone please tell me what the new topic of the thread is now? It obviously became something else, I'm just not sure what.
[ January 28, 2005, 10:52 AM: Message edited by: Human ]
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View kat's first post, then look at my meta-comment, and think about what both it and her comment mean regarding her comment. That should help elucidate things.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Human, it started as something akin to attack mode on some people in our government, accusing them of something akin to rape. Other people, who do not think the government should be accused of things it didn't commit, disagreed with the allegation. This prompted insinuations about them. So, instead of a discussion, it's a combination of attacks and defensiveness. Which is too bad, because a genuine discussion could be interesting.
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Finally, an actual on-topic comment by the one person who the entirety of her posts on this thread had been attacking people actually making on-topic comments.
It is, of course, not a biased comment at all, assuming things factual where there is in fact considerable debate.
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I'm confused. I think we were discussing to know if these actions can be called torture, and if torture can be justified. Yes, and no, as far as I'm concerned.
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I don't really think that torture works. It didn't really do much good during the witch hunts, except getting people to confess to a bunch of things that were impossible. People never learn. To these men, it is a form of torture, it violates them. It's sort of like if their men were doing something simular to our soilders. It would pretty much have the same effect.
Also, there are quite a few cultures that view menstrual blood as unclean. There's even a whole part in Leviticus about what a woman should sacrifice after her period and all.
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Do you think that someone innocent wouldn't tell anything he's asked to tell under torture ? I know I would ! That attitude makes me sick, especially - and it's often - when it come for religious people who say life is sacred, but are willing to do anything to someone as long as they don't identify him as human - foreigner, for exemple, people from other religions, or someone suspected - and I underline suspected - of terrorism !
