The perspective of the enemy is critically important when developing intelligence approaches that are not torture.

If you would like, the American public could have a debate about what constitutes torture and when it should be applied. That would be one way to set this line you speak of. But of all the ways I can imagine to set the line, the actions we're talking about fall on the correct side of it. It's not torture. And prisoners do not have the same rights as the rest of the free world. That's why they're prisoners.

And these prisoners aren't even Iraqi, so now you have mixed your metaphors. If Iraq is Vietnam, Guantanamo is...? Hard to keep it all straight, isn't it?

So UT, you have found another Rush Limbaugh. So why are the people so explosive? Does not matter. They are only gooks. They must be evil.

How many harmless things occurred previously to make those people so explosive? We don't need those details. That people are explosive is enough to say we are right and they are wrong. They are explosive. Therefore they must be religious extremists. But they are only gooks.

UT, you are simply promoting more reasons to move that line closer to Saddam and Hitler. Clearly the US did nothing, did nothing, did noooothing (just as Sgt Schultz says) to make those people angry.

Clearly that Pakistani cricket player was only inciting riots for his own personal benefit. Clearly he is too fat and rich to care about important things - like torture and Korans down the toilet. How convenient, UT, that you tactically approve of torture in Guantanamo. No problem. The line is in the wrong place. We just move it a little ... no problem. Harmless.

We can't be wrong. We are the righteous Americans. It must be those religious extremists causing all problems. Take a look in the mirror. Torture is harmless.

UT now declares actions that do not leave permanent organ damage are not torture. Of course that is torture - except to those who think such principles exist only to be circumvented. He says we can debate what requires no debate. The line has long since been defined. Only an extremist supporter would want to debate a well defined truth.

Torture has long since been defined. America is torturing prisoners - and that is called being patriotic? Yes, America simply decided the entire world is wrong and that torture is no longer torture. That was also the attitude of Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and Richard Nixon. Unfortunately many also admire these men of anti-American attitudes.

The definitions of torture need no debate. Torture has long been defined. Torture even resulted in many silly Orange Alerts. Alerts based upon "confessions" of prisoners being tortured. UT would have us believe the current administration - who even lied about the aluminum tubes - is moral? He says the definition of torture can change when necessary. We can move the line whenever it is convenient. This is what Hitler did to take and exercise power - to destroy a democracy. Just another lesson one should have learned from history.

Meanwhile UT also says we don't know if the Koran was violated. Bull. We have all but the 'smoking gun' - and administration supporters so immoral as to justify it.

yes. we have all BUT a smoking gun. now, i don't know about you, tw, but i personally believe that we should be careful about rushing forward without a "smoking gun". charging forward without that "smoking gun", might lead to some mistakes. but if you don't feel a "smoking gun" is necessary before making up your mind and taking action, who am i to disagree? i mean, after all, you are the one with the brilliant analytical mind who has been able to consistantly see the truth and point it out to us simpletons.

Congratulations. You just conceded that we should go back to Afghanistan and find Bin Laden. Bin Laden (and not Saddam) is the smoking gun - the real enemy of America. What took you so long? Oh... that is in direct contradiction to White House dictatorships .... orders.

Well, Rice did not call for calm in The Cellar, did she.

Here you go.

HM - i don't doubt or necessarily care about a flushed a koran. i was poking tw with a stick. tw - you know that guy who is always demanding the smoking gun? oh, c'mon - you know tw, the author of the previous post, who completely missed the point, yet again?

It just seemed like a good place to point out that Newsweek's only mistakes were picking a spineless source and retracting the whole story rather than clarifying their sourcing problem.

As long as you believe the inmates.

There's one other thing I find remarkable about this thread. A few miles north of here is Graterford State Prison. I have no doubt that it is one of the ugliest hell-holes in the state and that 9 out of 10 inmates could complain about abuse far, far, FAR worse than anything we're talking about here. This has been going on as long as people have been imprisoned and... you guys want to not offend religious extremists.

I mean prison rape has been the subject of so many sitcom and standup bits for twenty years that the subject is actually hack and... a spot of menstrual blood to try to get info out of a terrorist and it's the end of the world to you guys.

Hypocrisy.

If we want to discuss the disgusting state of our domestic prisons, I'm happy to rail against that as well. But since that is more of a continual than a current event, that discusion wouldn't have the linky goodness of recent reports. I'd love for a national debate to start over improving prison conditions.

However, even taking into account the flaws in the judicial system, prison inmates have been tried and convicted, and aren't merely suspects. And the majority of prison abuse is (I suspect, not know for certain) negligence, willful or not, rather than action on the part of the guards. The sheer scale of the prison problem makes up for that difference, though.

does burning them down while the residents are sleeping count as improvement?

So maybe it's not hypocracy. The people who don't care about US prison conditions don't care about abuse in prisoner camps, and the people who do care about prison conditions also care about prisoner abuse.

Where can I find this definition you speak of?

The koran problem can be solved by removing all korans from Gitmo. :)

Newsweek Lutefisk Story Sparks Fury Across Volatile Midwest

Here's another thing. If humiliation is torture, when we engage Arabic cultures with cultural sensitivity we should not include women or Jews in our military. If we defeat them with the help of women or Jews, that would ultimately be very humiliating to them. (Well, the fundamentalists anyway.)

Under that logic we just can't fight them at all then ... unless we put up a force of only Muslim fighters, which we can't do because it would be discriminatory.

Okay. They win.

Oh wait ... they win just so long as people keep thinking this way ... I get it.

1) Prisoners have different rules than battlefield foes. You can't toss a grenade at prisoners, or spray them with a machine gun either.

2) Female or Jewish soldiers are incidental. Torture is personal.

The original defintion of torture was about 1948. I believe it was defined in support of the original Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In later versions, the definition was refined to be more explicit. I believe there may have been up to four revisions of that Universal Declaration. US laws may have also further defined torture in order to make it illegal.

However Gonzales, to redefine torture, ignored later US signed treaties and worked to circumvent US laws so that he could use a simplified 1948 definition for his reinterpretation. Part of that process was to get anyone captured in Afghaistan or suspected of being Al Qaeda to be 'not a prisoner of war' so they could be tortured, denied basic human rights, et al.

What was even considered torture was redefined by Gonzales. For example, tie a man's arms behind his back, then hang him from the ceiling by those wrists. If this did not permanently damage an organ, then it was not torture.

If the man's skin was painfully pealed from his body AND if the skin eventually grew back, then that too was not torture. No permanent organ damage.

Ironically, the only reason we know about this is because the military Jag Corp has been strongly united against what has been happening in Gitmoized locations. Had the Military Jag corp not gone to the Supreme Court, then much of this ongoing torture in 2002 and 2003 would never have been exposed.

Numerous ways that torture is declared illegal is found in many treaties and American laws - some that apply even though they don't specifically mention torture. Instead an article might define as illegal any actions that degrade a human. Those other provisions also mean torture would be illegal.

I believe it was an interview with Jag lawyers who initially laid this all out. They demonstrated why torture as America now practices it was illegal for reason after reason. I hit a saturation point and simply could not keep up with the so many points presented by this Jag lawyer. Even in his Senate confirmation hearing, the fact that Gonzales did rewrite the definition of torture was not disputed. I recall even an "ends justifies the means" answer was provided to justify 'moving of this line'.

Well, in Graterford, if the threat of rape exists, then the prison will move the threatened prisoner. The 'powers that be' do whatever they can to protect prisoners.

In Abu Ghriad, where most prisoners are innocent and were never even accused in a court of law, the prison guards and intelligent agents were the "rapists". The 'powers that be' do the attacking. Who is left to try to protect the prisoner?

Hypocracy is one simply forgetting who is doing the "raping". It was called Gitmoize. It was authorized in the highest levels of the American government. A so called 'moral' administration.

It was a good point, UT. It demonstrates how Ruch Limbaugh types can so easily distort facts with half truths.

Which left me wondering if indeed providing Korans were done as an intended part of a torture process. I doubt it. But considering they would even use fake menstrual blood, well, these interrogators were that devious.

And yes, we even had spy prisoners imbedded with the prisoners. At least one spy finally had to request 'reassignment'. In that interview, even he admitted he could not longer withstand pressure after what I believe was eight months. It would also explain the so many rumored suicide attempts.

If humiliation is illegal, we'll have to close all the public schools in this country. :lol:
I'm having a hard time grasping the outrage over humiliation or embarrassment, without physical harm. Permanent organ damage falls a little short of covering some things that I'd consider torture, but some of the claims sound silly.
I guess I'd is key to how anyone views these claims. I guess it's OK if it's not happening to anyone I know. :o