Listening to talk radio while I'm surfing here and what do I hear. Johnaton Alder and Newsweek say it is different times and maybe we should consider torture.
I may be a "conspiracy nut" but this just falls right into line with an agenda for making this a nation that will turn on a dime in turning over your neighbor. Or perhaps gathering up those of us who oppose government tyranny. Boxcars anyone????
When I hear this kind of chattering my ears perk up and I think back to something I read here or maybe in an article or something some other conspiracy nut might have said. This is all to Orwellian.
Am I being paranoid or are there others whose hair is starting to stand up?

It worked well in Vietnam. We "allowed" others to do the "Interrogation".

I say that we allow our NATO Ally the "Turk's" handle all of our "Torture Details". Rest assured, the one being "Coaxed" into talking, will squeal like a stuck pig.

My coworker was an Interrogator/Translator with the Rangers in Vietnam. He said they would just turn the hardcases over to the South Vietnamese intel guys and these hardcore VC badasses would be singing in no time.

One technique he shared with me:

They would jam a towel into the VC's mouth and halfway down his throat, then slowly dump water on it a canteen at a time. The towel swells up as it absorbs the water, then slowly lets the water run back into their throat and sinuses like they're drowning.

Anything they use on alleged terrorists today, they will justify using it on you and your children tommorow.

No thanks.

The time my governemnt starts using torture is the time I start picking off politicians.

Absolutely not. We are a civilized nation.

Okay....I Give Up.....Let the South Korean's have a crack at the one's that don't want to talk. They are as good as the Turk's.

I say we string the terrorist up by 1200lbs test cord with some huge fish hooks thru their fingers nails and let them hang like that till their fingernails rip out of their fingers or they talk. And then of course you would use the assorted chemical agents to assist them in telling the truth and if all else fails we round up their families and execute them 1 by 1 in front of the terrorist after we torture them till they tell us what we want to know. This my sound mean or extreme but if someone is messing with my family and country then all bets are off and you better believe their is no such thing as fighting "fair"!

Turn them over to either Mossad or the South Koreans.  Or maybe it is time to develop our own inhouse expertise.

GunLvr

torture? no
"truth" drugs? yes if they actually work
that way the innocent won't be hurt

No way No how Not anytime ever. This could get out of hand real quick. Dont want to make that mistake now or my children will suffer later

Yes drugs and sleep deprivation work just fine by themsleves, no need for drawing blood.

However the two Al-Qida guys that we arrested this weekend, one of whom is the gentleman caught on video in Maylasia speeking with one of the hijackers, are being shipped to Jordan right now instead of the US.

Exactly.  This is all that torture is good for. Making people tell you what you want to know.

Or rather, what you want to hear.

You start smacking my balls with a hammer, i'll tell you any damnd thing you want, if it makes you stop.

I posted a thread about the movie Brazil yesterday. They called it "information retrieval".

Here's a good commentary from Jonah Goldberg at NationalReviewOnline.com:
[url]http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg101201.shtml[/url]

[size=4]The World According to Me[/size=4]
[b]Why torture is sometimes good, and democracy is bad.[/b]

Imagine we had someone in our custody on September 10 who we knew could tell us how to prevent the murder and destruction of the next day. Now, I think it would be unpleasant, but hardly morally impermissible, to take a cheese grater to his face or make him watch Caddyshack II until he gave up the information we needed.

This seems like a no-brainer to me. But it doesn't to a lot of readers who chastised me for condoning torture. So I thought I would use this opportunity to offer my grand theory of democracy and explain why I don't think guilty people should have rights.

First, let me clarify. Guilty people do have rights in our system, and that is necessary and good. But it isn't necessary and good for the reasons most people think. Guilty people (by which I mean murderers, rapists, practitioners of mopery) have rights only because we aren't sure they're guilty. If we were sure, they would have no rights.

[b]The Case For Torture[/b]

Take this torture thing. Now, I am not "pro-torture." I agree with numerous readers when they say torture is morally corrupting.
*     *     *
But let's keep in mind that there are all sorts of things which are similarly demeaning. Cops have to do things everyday, including kill people, which they find personally degrading. Nobody wants to wake up a homeless veteran and tell him that he can't sleep on a grate. But sometimes cops have to do that. Occasionally, prison guards are forced to treat grown men with families like animals. But we still need prison guards. And soldiers are sometimes ordered to do horrific things which cause them trauma for years, even decades — but sometimes those horrific things are necessary (and sometimes they're not). Torture isn't all that different.

Torture is against the law in Israel (we can't say the same about most, if not all, of her neighbors). But Israel's Supreme Court grants an exception, the so-called "ticking bomb" excuse. If Israeli authorities are positive there's a bomb about to go off somewhere which will kill untold numbers of innocents, they can use "physical pressure" — or some other sanitized euphemism for torture — on someone in their custody, if he has information about how to prevent it.

Imagine if the FBI announced that we were in a similar position on September 10, but we declined to whack the guy around "because torture is always wrong." Six thousand people die; the country loses billions of dollars which could have been spent more productively. Hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs, and hundreds of millions live in fear. Do you think the guy who made the decision not to fill a pillow case with a bunch of oranges and make like Barry Bonds would come out a national hero? Do you think the gang at an NYPD funeral would say, "Hey there goes the conscience of the nation!"?

The rest of his article is just as good, go read it! I'm for capital punishment and am cynical enough to believe that sometimes there will be an innocent man put to death. It will be rare, but it will happen.

That doesn't keep me from supporting the death penalty, however!

Eric The(I'mAllForA'TickingBomb'Exception,AsWell)Hun[>]:)]

We of all people in this country ought to realize that anything that the politicians pass to fight terrorism will be used against us eventaully.

They pass a law outlawing all firearms, your name is on a list of past firearms ownership, even though you turned your in, they know how you sickos stick together, so a quick blow torch to your testicles to get some names and they can move on.

Nope, no thanks.

Give them all kidney stones.  That will get them talking.

GunLvr

here's the thing, they want to start torturing the 700 people they've detained, but I bet most of those are innocent
as for the Jonah Goldberg article, yeah if we were 100% sure the person could tell us info to stop the attacks and he was 100% guilty the torture might not be as distasteful, but we can't always be 100% sure
what happens when the JBT think a person is involved and cuts off their finger trying to get them to talk, then find out they really were innocent

Here we go again...

Dont we have laws against "cruel and unusual punishment"?

Torture suits these aholes just fine.  We can farm it out to a NATO member.  Theygot the experience.  We need to extract every bit of knowledge out of these folks right before we send them express style to Allah.
Too bad for them.  War is hell.

Those several hundred people we have "detained" all have one thing in common--they won't talk.

Why do people solve problems with inappropriate solutions?

Just declare them "spies" and tell them they will be wrapped up in a pig skin and shot if they don't talk.  Then start shooting them, one at a time.

"Me surrender my civil rights!? No, I'd rather just start executing you spies."

-------
"Death to Spies"

American citizens have rights.
POW's have rights.
But if someone comes here from a country we are not at war with, and has the intent to harm thousands of people, do they have rights?

Or is it blowtorch and pipe wrench time?

Hook the terrorist bastards' nuts up to a car battery until they sing like a bird, albeit in Soprano.

1. Answer to problem of torturing an innocent person.

2. If, after spending hours or days of torturing a person, and he (or she) is found to know nothing, then of course, you will have to kill him (or her) to cover up the evidence, and of course, properly dispose of the body.

Or.....

3. As mentioned before, let people who are experts at extracting information from people that are unwilling to talk.

Finally....

4. We know they are guilty or we wouldn't have arrested them in the first place.

Lock them in a padded cell, with a light on 24/7 and various loud, destracting noises being piped into the room. Restrict food and water. What little they get, spike with either rohipnol or LSD.

Personally I'd go with the rufies first.  If it works they wouldn't even remember being questioned.

If they go on hunger strike and wont cooperate, start squirting NOx into the cell.

Threaten to make their names and faces public. Then let them go without protection. If our people dont kill them, bin Ladens will.

Enlist the help of Hollywood. Fake a interrogation with torture. Show the film to suspects and make them think it is LIVE. It helps if you have them drugged.  Make them thihk they will eventually face the same if they keep talking.

By the way if you people do not think that our government already tortures any one they see fit to then you need to open your eyes! Our government does a lot of stuff that "good guys" are not suposed to do. But I always say in a fight it's not a matter of good guys or bad guys, it's a matter of winners and loser (aka the living or the dead)and I prefer to be on the living side of the equation.

Ok BRay,

Name a case where someone was tortured by the government and the officers got away with it????

There are many things done by our government that you will never hear of and for the most part that is probably a good thing as some of the things they do would turn most peoples stomachs. If you do not understand this then I will drop the subject so you can continue to sleep well at night.

PS
I am not trying to be mean or a smart ass just being as honest and polite as I know how.

Local cops used to use all sorts of shit in the past, and some still try to do it now. But the media LOVES this shit, look at what went on at Rampart division in LA... so they dont do it very often anymore... when they try it, sooner or later they get caught through the Media.

They have already passed the anti-terrorism bill, now it is just a matter of classifying who's a terrotist.