QFAC: The Candidates Position on Torture, page 2
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ATS Members have flagged this thread 3 times


reply posted on 20-4-2007 @ 01:36 AM by The Vagabond
To answer your question borg, even if those who fall into enemy hands are being tortured, we should consider torture beneath us. Retaliating against prisoners in our custody will not in any way help any prisoners who might be held by the enemy, so what would be the point?
We've already decided that our military can function without intelligence gained through torture- if that weren't the case we never would have agreed to abide by treaties that prohibit it.

The relevance of torture on the battlefield is diminishing somewhat. We can track spot the enemy for ourselves now far more easily than we could beat an honest answer out of a prisoner.

We might rarely get our hands on someone who knows something that we cannot find out as easily on our own but even in those cases there is a question of cost/benefit that settles the argument even if one does not accept the obvious moral and legal reasons to abstain from such practices.

So we capture a high ranking Al Qaida figure and we hook him up to a car battery until he tells us where Bin Laden was last week.
So great, we know where we should have bombed last week, and we assign John Titor to the case, but naturally that proves to be a huge disappointment.
And to get this completely useless, unverifiable information, we have undermined the justice of our cause, costing ourselves much-needed support both at home and abroad. This puts us at risk of failing the very necessary criteria of public support, deprives us of some foreign intelligence assistance we may otherwise be able to get, and makes us look like exactly what the terrorists tell people we are, thus bolstering their recruitment. I'm not saying that America brought terrorism on itself, but I will say that maybe it would be a little bit more difficult for Al Qaida to find jihadists to recruit if we would stop acting exactly the way they would expect the "great satan" to act.

There is neither a moral nor a material justification for torture. You get far better mileage out of a careful mixture of bribery and shrewd use of technology and deception, and the consequences of being wrong don't suck half as much then either.


reply posted on 1-6-2007 @ 08:50 PM by Byrd
Originally posted by Odium1. The U.S. Congress approved Senator John McCain’s amendment last year to ban torture by all U.S. government agencies. This move recognized that a ban on torture is not only a moral necessity but also essential to ensure the same protections for U.S. soldiers. Recent legislative action, however, allows harsh interrogation techniques to be used by non-military interrogators. Will you support future legislation that bans all U.S.-sponsored torture, with no exceptions and directs all U.S. agents to abide by the Geneva Conventions?


Completely. 100%. In fact, I'll go as far as to support having non-military interrogators adhering to the same standards.

2. The federal War Crimes Act of 1996 defines a war crime as any “grave breach” of the Geneva Conventions’ Common Article 3. This standard ensures that those who commit such abuses, including against our own troops, do not go unpunished. Do you believe the United States should maintain an unwavering commitment to Common Article 3?


How can we insist that our soldiers be humanely treated if we don't treat our own prisoners humanely? I support that, 100%.

3. The president acknowledged the existence of a CIA program that indefinitely detains “enemy combatants” in secret sites outside the rule of law and without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Individuals detained in such locations are afforded no safeguards of due process and may be subject to unchecked abuses. Will you call upon the United States to cease all secret detentions and provide the ICRC access to all U.S. prisoners, as required by our international treaty obligations?


I will. I think the secret program is a rather disgusting artifact of the Cold War.

4. Under the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” the United States transports individuals from one country to another without judicial oversight to face criminal charges in the receiving country. Diplomatic assurances from the receiving government are designed to protect the human rights of the detainee, but many officials have confirmed that the U.S. has no capacity to ensure humane treatment under these circumstances. Do you support a prohibition on transfers of individuals in U.S. custody to other countries where they are likely to be tortured regardless of assurances otherwise?


Yes. Again, if we do not support this kind of treatment for our troops, then we should not do it ourselves.

5. Recent legislation will permit—for the first time in the history of the United States— individuals to be convicted based on evidence obtained through abuse or torture (admitted through hearsay evidence). Will you oppose this practice, even for trials involving terrorism suspects?

Actually, it's not the first time in US history -- see the Salem Witch trials for another disgusting example.

No, I don't support it. People who have been tortured will say ANYthing to get the torture to stop. This has been proved countless times. It is not justice to convict someone based on evidence gained through torture.

6. By making War Crimes Act changes that are retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has immunized all top government officials and CIA agents against prosecution for interrogation policies that resulted in the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and in secret government torture cells around the globe. Should top government officials, private contractors, and CIA officials be given blanket immunity for their past conduct?


I don't think the changes should be retroactive. I would work to have that removed. I think they need to be held accountable.

7. More than two years after the Abu Ghraib photos were published — and nearly four years after the first abuse-related deaths in U.S. custody as part of the “war on terror” — we are still not in a position to say that we know how this situation came about so that we can ensure that such abuses never happen again. Do you support the establishment of an independent commission to investigate U.S. detention and interrogation policies and practices since Sept. 11, 2001, and to hold those who authorized and carried out abuses accountable?


Actually, I think we do know what the cause was -- failure within the military infrastructure. The leaders set the policies and are responsible for them. Yes, an investigation should be conducted -- but modifications to basic training need to be done.

And we need to quit using contractors.

8. Under recent legislation, the president will be permitted to authorize acts that are prohibited by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogations, without the possibility of court review of this authority. This strips the courts of their historical and constitutional role as a check on the executive branch. Do you oppose this broad expansion of executive powers, allowing the president to choose to follow or not follow international treaties, and that will side-step the authority of our courts system?

I'm against that. The office of the presidency isn't supposed to be a dictatorship.

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