Re: Gulags L3
Just as note that while I did do a lot of thought and research into it it was posted at nearly 5 AM and there are some things I would not have written or at least written better with more sleep. Gary D ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Gulags L3
On 7/1/05, Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Gary Denton [EMAIL PROTECTED] Answering your thoughtful post. Then it would seem that all AQ has to answer is name rank and serial number, right? I don't think so. What is prohibited is usually considered, based on article 130: grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, or willfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention. That would mean things that are not torture and is not causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health might be permitted depending on how far you go. A lot of the debate within officials with long experience and the new political appointees based on leaked memos are explorations as to what extent techniques like water boarding (drowning without killing) and sleep deprivation and long periods of times in uncomfortable positions (that actually do cause long-term damage) and techniques that are extremely painful but leave no permanent damage (electrodes anyone?) are lawful. Do we really want to explore this? You want to interrogate someone - should you have the guards rough up the prisoners for several days before the interrogation as long as they leave no permanent physical scars? Several of the people released after over a year and never charged have long-term disabilities now. No carrot, no stick at all, is the way I read the Geneva Conventions on POWs. Is that what you think should be the case? I think that must come from the controversial Article 17 - No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind. This does not preclude classic plea bargaining - that is, the offer of leniency in return for cooperation - or other incentives. Plea bargaining and related incentives has been used repeatedly with success to induce cooperation from members of other violent criminal enterprises such as the Mafia or drug traffickers. Unpleasant results... I am opposed to using torture in the name of democracy. I am wondering if you are minimizing or are truly unaware of some of the things classified under unpleasant results which in places outside of Gitmo have included torturing people to death. No, I'm not doing that. I'm trying to obtain first and understanding of what has been going on, and then trying to form a reasonable opinion about it. I don't think that when the Geneva Convention talks about unpleasantness that they were using a euphemism for torture. I took it as, well, unpleasantness. For example, you could not interrupt the sleep of people who aren't talking. You couldn't change their diet from a tasty one to one that is nutritious, follows their dietary laws, but is rather tasteless and bland. You couldn't impose solitary confinement for refusing to talk. You couldn't shine lights in their cell. 1st - I think historically article 17 has not been interpreted strictly. 2nd - Who do you want to cause unpleasantness to and why? 3rd To what degree do you want to cause unpleasantness? 4th - Is there any evidence this unpleasantness is effective? 5th Aren't there undesirable consequence to using these techniques, in the reliability of information obtained, in brutalizing our guards as well as the prisoners, in our standards of decency, in the world's opinion of us, in God's eyes? 6th A long history of research in torture and brutal interrogation techniques shows it is not effective. What might be called plea bargaining deals and a long process of extracting information in a relatively cooperative atmosphere has been shown to be much more accurate. Basically, it appears that prisoners should be as well treated as one's own soldiers until the war is over. You can't even refuse them cigarettes as a means of getting them to talk. That's what I'm referring to when I write of unpleasantness. And where did you find this interpretation? I eventually found article 17 in looking through the articles. The killing of prisoners who are not engaged in life threatening activities (e.g. an armed prison riot) is not acceptable. Torturing prisoners is not acceptable; particularly ones that are not likely to have information that can save hundreds or thousands of lives. The actions depicted in the Time report looks to be on the borderline to me. That's why I copied the details of that and asked
Re: Gulags L3
Dan, I will have to think about your reply more for a fuller answer. Right now I am convinced we are in the early stages of admitting the invasion was a tragic mistake and plunged us into an unwinable war. The issue of how we treat prisoners should be resolved to restore the good name of the United States while also protecting the U.S. from real terrorists. I will also have to reread the Time article. You do know that Time has a long history of presenting some foreign policy and intelligence information in ways that the CIA and other conservative policy leaders wanted out? Time Magazine was tied to the CIA and a loosely organized group that evolved into the neo-cons and had some of the closest editorial connections. In the 70's it came out that hundreds of US journalists were also on the payroll of the CIA. The opinion of the owners of much of the so called liberal media was expressed by Washington Post's owner Katharine Graham at CIA headquarters, There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows. She didn't admit to not only covering up but actively pushing a CIA story numerous times. On the Democrats lack of organized widely supported alternative plans - they have a much more complicated political job. Reeves editorial quoting Thomas Mann: Republicans have to defend a war that was very badly planned and is costing much more in blood and treasure than the public was led to believe. Democrats struggle to define and agree on alternative policy that doesn't simply write off the sacrifices already made by our armed forces and accept defeat. In other words, the die has been cast; we have crossed both the Tigris and the Euphrates. But if history is our guide, it will take six more years to declare peace with honor, one more time. As if most of us, Iraqis aside, did not already know that this war is over. We tried the impossible again, with the usual result -- and it will take time to craft a noble rationale for what we have done to ourselves. http://tinyurl.com/9ahgw or http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=123e=1u=/ucrr/20050624/cm_ucrr/timetablesixmoreyearsiniraq On 7/1/05, Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: a very thoughtful reply. -- Gary Denton http://www.apollocon.org June 24-26 Easter Lemming Blogs http://elemming.blogspot.com http://elemming2.blogspot.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Gulags L3
- Original Message - From: Gary Denton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 3:50 AM Subject: Re: Gulags The stance of the experts I cited seems to be all prisoners, POW or not, are entitled to the standard of care specified in the Geneva Conventions except for communications between governments regarding the prisoners. Then it would seem that all AQ has to answer is name rank and serial number, right? . No carrot, no stick at all, is the way I read the Geneva Conventions on POWs. Is that what you think should be the case? Unpleasant results... I am opposed to using torture in the name of democracy. I am wondering if you are minimizing or are truly unaware of some of the things classified under unpleasant results which in places outside of Gitmo have included torturing people to death. No, I'm not doing that. I'm trying to obtain first and understanding of what has been going on, and then trying to form a reasonable opinion about it. I don't think that when the Geneva convention talks about unpleasantness that they were using a euphemism for torture. I took it as, well, unpleasantness. For example, you could not interrupt the sleep of people who aren't talking. You couldn't change their diet from a tasty one to one that is nutritious, follows their dietary laws, but is rather tasteless and bland. You couldn't impose solitary confinement for refusing to talk. You couldn't shine lights in their cell. Basically, it appears that prisoners should be as well treated as one's own soldiers until the war is over. You can't even refuse them cigarettes as a means of getting them to talk. That's what I'm referring to when I write of unpleasantness. The killing of prisoners who are not engaged in life threatening activities (e.g. an armed prison riot) is not acceptable. Torturing prisoners is not acceptable; particularly ones that are not likely to have information that can save hundreds or thousands of lives. The actions depicted in the Time report looks to be on the borderline to me. That's why I copied the details of that and asked questions. There is a wide range of possibilities for what has happened at Gitmo, which strongly influences my understanding of Bush's approach to the handling of prisoners. If the Time story gives a good feel for the limits set by the Bush government for the treatment of prisoners that they consider the most likely to provide critical information, then we can make some conclusions. Worse treatment of less important prisoners(importance measured in terms of intelligence potential) would probably not be directly ordered. Instead, one would look to not providing proper oversight, clear guidelines, the proper atmosphere, etc. as culprits in the worsening of the US treatment of prisoners. If this understanding is false, and the full range of torture techniques are used at Gitmo, then things are different. One would have to assume that Time magazine was given a record that ignored the instances of real torture. But, one would also expect that there would be deaths at Gitmo under very suspicious circumstances...as there were elsewhere. I think that the data are vague and uncertain enough to be consistent with a range of hypothesis, but I think that the majority of the data does support something along what I outlined. I realize that there are testimonials about horrid mistreatment of people we have released. But, one has to take these with a grain of salt. A person who stood up to torture by Americans is a hero. One who really had nothing to admit, was a cooperative prisoner, got along OK with the MPs, played soccer regularly, etc. is not quite as heroic. In short, just because one should take the administration's claims with a grain of salt doesn't mean that one swallows competing claims whole. It is possible for more than one person to lie. :-) BushCo. had to make a decision how to treat those who attacked the US. They went along like the overage frat boys they are saying what they would like to have done to them and then got their lawyers to come up with reasons and ways they could ignore the military justice system and our prisoner system and use rogue agent CIA rules. While that is certainly an emotionally satisfying explanation, I think a cold examination of the facts show something a bit more subtle. One of the problems that came out in the testimony of the 9-11 commission was the uncertainty the CIA had as to whether they could kill Bin Laden if/when they had them in their sights. A picture of the CIA as a risk avoiding bureaucracy came out, in the testimony, as well as from other information. One example of this is the fact that someone who has no contact with the rest of the world has a far easier time getting high security clearances than someone who has had extensive contact and experience. Yet, the latter are far more useful for work in intelligence than the
