Thumbs Up to Torture, it ok to use it.

hey thanks to whoever it was that left me a rep with the message 'fuck you' for starting this thread. I'll take it as a compliment. Have nice day.

 

Wasn't me.

Ask Lynndie England if torture is now legal.

Willow, one thing I always notice when responding to your posts is that after doing the research, it always turns out that you are grossly distorting the issues to make sure they can be stuffed into your i hate america template.

The bill does not say people can be SENT to countries TO BE tortured. It says that people can be deported to countries which have a history of torture. The "powers that be" supporting this bill exclude Alberto Gonzales and Henry Hyde, by the way, as they have specifically spoken out against it.

 

Deported and Sent... hmm yes.. HUGE difference..

 

OK as always I'll be the jerk, flame me give me bad rep, *Whatever* If torture could help stop another 9/11 then I'm all for it. Shit I'll break little monkey arms if thats what it takes.

 

There IS a huge difference and it is being deliberately obscured here. If we can SEND a prisoner to Pakistan SO THAT he can be tortured and then taken back to the US, that is approval of torture. That's not what the bill does.

The bill was written to deal with a homeland security issue - what to do with people we can no longer hold in custody (given recent supreme court rulings) but don't want to keep in the country. The answer is to deport them. But many of these people come from countries which use torture. So if we DEPORT them BACK to their home country we would be breaking international agreements, and it would be difficult to find anywhere else that would want to take them. This bill was a poorly conceived solution to this problem.

I'm not supporting the bill. I just don't see why it has to be misrepresented. Is someone uncertain that Hipforums readers would come to the "correct" conclusion if presented with an accurate description of the bill, and therefore it needs to be "sexed up" to assure the desired response?

 

Look up Maher Arar...a canadian citizen who was extraordinarily renderred to Syria on the basis of his last name being connected to a relative of his mother who was a terrorist (they may as well lock up my fiance on that logic since an old relative of his was a treasonist). He was sent there even though he's actually a citizen of Canada, just because he was born in Syria and his family lived there. And he was kept there for almost a whole year being tortured, his family back in Canada worrying, wondering what the hell had happened to him, and then he was finally returned having given no information to anyone because he had none to give having not actually been involved in any terrorist activities. This has BEEN going on for many years, through the CIA, but there are at least 2 provisions in this bill that would make it completely legal. There were two versions of this bill, a House and a Senate one. The Senate version had NO provisions in it that would make this legal, and the 911 Commission actually asked the House to work theirs more like the Senates. They don't even like those provisions. This isn't even a partisan issue either, as both Republicans and Democrats have been opposing these provisions. The Bar Association is also against the provisions. The bill is still up in the air as far as I last heard. They haven't been able to agree on it, mainly, from what I've ready, because of these provisions. There was an amendment proposed by a rep named Markey (i think), that would allow for those provisions, but would make it so the "outsourcing of torture" would still not be quite legal. That was shot down real quick. But they added one amendment that they said would fix it....all it says is that basicaly our guys will ask the country they'll be deporting their suspect to, if they'll be torturing said suspect when he/she gets there, if that country says "yes we will" then we can't send the suspect...if that country says "no we won't" then we can. And basically we'll just take these countries at their word :rolls eyes:. Why not just keep the suspects out of the countries we denounce for practicing torture anyway?

I've actually read a lot about this, because of an article LaughinWillow posted a while back that I thought MUST have been exaggerating. So I investigated, and it's a very real issue. I even wrote to my representative about it. I'm tellin ya, check out that blog link. And google the words "extraordinary rendition", "outsourcing torture", Maher Arar, H.R. 10 (specifically Sections 3032 and 3033). I made a post after I read up on it, and included a lot of reputable links to news sources, rep Markey's site which includes a lot of info on it, and links to the bill itself. Got barely a response at all. I'd go find those links again, and any more I could get a hold of, but I only have time for this right now. So much homework. I think, even if you come out with a different perspective on the issue though, it's worth looking into.

 

Wow. Thank you Co0kiezGurl. I was thinking along the same lines this morning( of doing some in depth research) when I re-read this post and then headed off for school (last final today, woooooohoooo). Thank you for the research leads and thank you for being diligent enough to follow up on it. That's some good solid info. Please come back and post links to the other threads you mentioned. People need to know about this.

 

I had also previously posted regarding the bill which permits the US to extradite people to be tortured (and anyone with any sense at all can see that is what it does), and also with very little concern from the warmongers on here. Things are particularly disturbing when people are actually justifying torture and the use of information gained through torture.

If the US can justify torture in this way, it seems to me that we should not complain when our own soldiers or citizens are the victims of torture and murder.

 

nohelmetlaws said

Actually whether we agree or disagree with torture or even limited use of torture can be turned into a logical decision or an emotional decision by the following two examples;

1. Your mother, sister, brother or close relative, someone you love deeply is being held by terrorists who are threatening to cut off their head just as a means of protest. An intelligence officer has told you that it is likely that one very frightened terrorist in custody is likely to provide details of where your relative is being held and under torture it is likely to provide the information needed to save your loved one. For some reason unknown to you the officer says that you have to make the decision with regard to authorising the interrogation;

a) Do you object
b) Do you accept

Personally I would accept

2. A terrorsist organisation has a nuclear warhead in a major city in your country. The government is in crisis and debating whether or not to use torture to extract the information from one of the terrorists held captive. It is likely that the terrorist will reveal information when placed under pressure. That evening the government organise a television vote.

a) As a voter you authorise the use of torture to save thousands of lives
b) As a voter you do not authorise use of torture in any shape or form.

Both of these are unlikely events in the way in which you would be asked so directly but the fact is that most of the human race is hell bent of self preservation and faced with difficult choices the overwhelming majority of people would sacrifice one person for thousands of people. It is both rational and logical for people to think this way.

 

I agree and in extreme cases with certainly of result it can absolutely be justified.

The thing is that so can any suspension of human rights or freedom. But once we start creating grey areas, I am sure that it would become a slippery slope and before long anything we give away to fight terrorism in "extreme circumstances" becomes a tool for the insatiable monster that is the war on drugs, or some other national hysteria which routinely invades the privacy and restricts the freedoms of millions of Americans.

 

A contributer in the blog I posted actually went about trying to find out whether torture actually did work to get good information from suspects and such.

In the case of Maher Arar though, he was wrongfully suspected and tortured for no reason. Eventually he signed a confession just to get out, but of course he's back home now so obviously they had nothing to charge him with and the confession was a crock because he just wanted to get out and go home.

Torture is immoral and unlawful, and only breeds more hatred for the US if we use it or condone it.

I'm in between classes right now, but I promise I'll come back with some links and stuff later this evening.

 

Library of Congress:Legislation information. To find the Bill, just type "h.r. 10" in the search box near the top of the page. it will show you two options. Click the first one. The second option has a lot of things struck out recently, but the first one is the "original" bill...just to see what the thing used to say. You'll have to scroll down to find Sec. 3032 and 3033.

They have finally got the Senate's "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by House)". If you search for "S. 2845" and then click on the 3rd option, you can scroll down to the two sections and see there have been changes made. However, representative Markey, the one who tried to amend it to make extraordinary rendition illegal, had this to say about it in a press release after it finally passed:

If you go to here on his website you can find a lot of his letters and press releases about all this.

Here's another quote from one of his statements about it:

Here's a "timeline" of Maher Arar's experience from CBS: Maher Arar: Timeline

Dude's got a website now too: Maher Arar

Here's a just lovely little article from Boston

A Washington Post article from '02

And another from this Oct.

and the NYtimes

transcript from swedish tv show: part 1 and part 2.
And I don't think I posted this one yet, but this other Washington Post article talks about the case in the swedish show.

Newsweek article on MSNBC, and a snippet:

And here's a comment from the woman who's been researching this and posting on the blog I posted earlier:

Here's a pdf from Amestly International that deals with a lot of the torture issues, not just ext. rendition.

Now I'm afraid I have to go finish up my homework for my last day of class (woohoo!). Hopefully these links help.

 

funny thing is every time I post this I hardly get a response (first one I posted I got 3...one saying thanks for the info, one from my fiance, and one from me telling the fiance thanks ). I got a nice rep comment though, thanks to whoever.

Guess this news/conspiracy/atrocity is just not "sexy" enough for action from you guys.

 

No, just a lot of info to go through, and we are glad to have it. Thanks for all the research, I have actually sent much of this information to friends.

 

Oh goody that really makes me glad, you have no idea.

This has become my little project since I found out about it. I've done a paper on it, and an Illustration piece on it (didn't come out quite how I intended though ), and I'm going to do another piece on it as a small part of my 10 piece thesis.

I'm aware of other things going on that I should be just as passionate about, but for some reason I kind of stuck myself to this one.

 

Hey thanks here too. I was patiently awaiting it's arrival.