05-11-2009, 12:04 AM
Quote:No. The United Nations Convention Against Torture standard is "severe mental or physical pain."You are right, my wording wasn't accurate enough. It should have been "Any action, extreme enough to force someone...". As Pete said earlier in this thread:
Quote:Clearly, if someone has information you want, and he doesn't want to give it to you, you are going to either 'force' it out of him or do without. Saying 'pretty please' isn't going to do it.If you want torture to 'work' you'll have to go to some extremes, so trying to place a 'line' is futile. If you let ethics and civilization count, you will end up with something that is quite impractical.
Consider the old Geneva Convention rules on this matter. It wasn't Amnesty International who made them up. It was *military* guys who realized that the remote chance of ever getting something useful from torture did not weigh up to the negative implications. What they had in mind was getting 'information about the enemy', but times have changed. Nowadays, the purpose of torture is to obtain 'threads', and unfortunately, that is much easier. As mentioned earlier, torture is very efficient in getting lots of information, of any type you want. I provided a link earlier, but in case you missed it: http://www.juancole.com/2006/10/craig-murr...ing-terror.html
Quote:Were they POWs, they would have immunity. But, many of those captured in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fail to meet the criteria for being POWs, and therefore are covered under civilian law.Now that's a strange remark, if you think about it. You think that people in a military uniform have more Human Rights then others? Does that mean that all Americans with a weapon and not in the army should be considered 'unlawful' combatant, if some enemy military force would set foot on American soil? And what happened the right of civilians to remain silent, because "... anything you say, can and will be used against you"?