To steal a line from a you tube commenter:
Frat initiation=voluntary participant. Prisoner = NOT VOLUNTARY PARTICIPANT. Doing things to someone that are repugnant to his/her religious beliefs==NOT OKAY. Justifying and minimizing these things = WAR CRIMINAL
The "ha ha- it's just panties" ploy was merely a way to distract from other human rights violations going on. But I really don't understand how you could confuse this with hazing, which while stupid is not the same as intimidation/interrogation. Frat boy hazing is committed by people you know (your "brothers") and it's meant to make people feel welcome (usually it ends up being stupid, dangerous and deadly -- but that's another post). But you can see frat hazing has a decidely different tone than foreign people holding someone against their will and torturing them --whether with phsyical pain or the threat of pain (keeping a large, growling dog nearby for instance).
I understand there are evil people in this world. If I had lost someone in the Twin Towers, I wouldn't trust myself to be responsible for interrogation. It's hard not to hurt and punish people who have done you wrong and declared themselves a dangerous enemy. But I expect more from my elected officials. I expect people who understand that torture is never the answer, and while we may feel attacked and wronged, it does not justify looking at another human being and sneering with disgust, "This man deserves no respect." Especially when this war's definition of an "enemy" has become so murky.
Also--- was anyone else pissed to learn how sexist many of these mental torture techniques were?
- Calling female family members whores (according to Rep. Rohrabacher "that's certainly not a nice thing to do" -- yeah, not nice)
- Putting women's underwear on their head
- questioning the prisoner's "latent homosexuality"
So we throw out the Geneva Convention, create real hostility and anger towards America and American people and at the same time propagate the notion that the worst way to humiliate men is to make them into women or homosexuals.
F THAT!
11 comments:
Might I direct your (creepily) enthusiastic attention to the movie "Rendition":
"In all the years you've been doing this, how often can you say that we've produced truly legitimate intelligence? Once? Twice? Ten times? Give me a statistic; give me a number. Give me a pie chart, I love pie charts. Anything, anything that outweighs the fact that if you torture one person you create ten, a hundred, a thousand new enemies."
"anything that outweighs the fact that if you torture one person you create ten, a hundred, a thousand new enemies"
this isn't a fact. or even a researched concept.
no, but it is common sense. think about it.
"no, but it is common sense. think about it."
If anything, common sense dictates that it will instill fear in potential terrorists, not create new ones. Think about it.
"no, but it is common sense. think about it."
Additionally, I can't even begin to tell you how much trouble we'd be in if policy was decided by what you consider common sense.
"Your immature ideas about torture make me sick."
For starters, I don't care what makes you sick... at all. Secondly, 'immature' is a pretty loose term. I would consider your ideas for government funded birth control immature. So who's right? You aren't the decider, that's for sure. So you can leave unsubstantiated bologna such as that out of the fray if you want to act like an adult.
"The Geneva convention was adopted for a reason. There has to be an ounce of humanity in war."
How much of the Geneva convention have you read? Any? Because it doesn't sound like it. The United States took a pretty clear stance that it was adopting the convention for the reasons of protecting our own troops during wartime. Nothing was stated about maintaining humanity during war. Our government cherishes American lives above all others. And rightly so, it's what the government was put in place to do. So, if waterboarding a captured terrorist well save American lives, I certainly think there are worse things.
"If the US sanctions torture than we best be prepared for our own US soldiers to be tortured if captured."
Our soldiers are generally beheaded with knives when they are captured. I guess maybe that doesn't fall under the category of "torture", but personally I'd rather be waterboarded.
"THINK... Then SPEAK..."
I always do. But do you? Your technorati tag cloud suggests you don't.
"NO, don't speak."
Typing. Does that count?
I just got a snark comment from 'anonymous' accusing me of "censoring" comments-- found this comment in junk mail.
Figured this was the "censored" article in question.
Not going to respond to it anymore than that.
There's no point arguing with people who don't know their history and believe torture is a-okay.
"There's no point arguing with people who don't know their history and believe torture is a-okay."
You've never read the Geneva Convention, have you?
Ba-zing. Got ya.
I should have made it clear. I have read it. Even wrote a paper on it in college. And referenced it frequently while doing work on behalf of Amnesty International?
HAVE YOU READ IT?
Like less than a page in, it goes something like this:
"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."
BA-ZING!
"The United States took a pretty clear stance that it was adopting the convention for the reasons of protecting our own troops during wartime. Nothing was stated about maintaining humanity during war."
Uh-huh. Maybe you missed this part. I think anybody with a 6th grade education understands that the Geneva convention is a means to prevent unfair treatment of prisoners of war.
What I said (and you evidently missed) is that the politics surrounding the convention fit the agenda of our country nicely... because we care about our citizens. Now, the part you fail to understand with many of these victims of "torture" is that they are not prisoners of war in a technical sense. For starters, many of them are not affiliated with a formally recognized military. Secondly, their country of origin is, in most cases, unknown.
Keep reading Tobes, you'll get there eventually.
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