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 questions.
On the one prisoner Time obtained limited incomplete records. The
prisoner was forcibly injected with fluids, grilled in proximity to
military dogs, many times interrogated for 20 hours straight,
humiliated by women,humiliated in various ways like being forced to
stand naked and bark like a dog, and given days of total sleep
deprivation even while under a doctor's care. This was apparently
stopped when they decided it wasn't effective. This seems borderline
to me as well - probably over the line in some cases. What were they
trying to obtain? It seems to be an admission he was a terrorist who
was supposed to be on one of the planes of 9/11.
Your understanding, or hope, is that this is an example of what we do
to only a few prisoners and all other prisoners are treated better.
OK, but they say us liberals are Pollyannas.
> 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. :-)
Where to begin. The Justice department after the many cases of
prisoner abuse proved embarrassing to the United States issued a new
legal definition of torture this past January flatly contradicting its
earlier memo which had caused all the debates and internal protests.
Do you think we were not using the earlier guidelines that the
administration has revoked? Do you think that what the administration
now defines as torture was not used relatively often?
Recently UN human rights experts have renewed their call for the US
government to permit them to check conditions at Guantanamo Bay,
citing "information, from reliable sources, of serious allegations of
torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees,
arbitrary detention, violations of their right to health and their due
process rights." Since the US has failed to give the UN a clear
explanation for such allegations, and has not responded to "repeated
requests" for access, the investigators decided to make their concerns
public, Do you think these serious allegations are not credible?
Doctors at Gitmo assisted interrogators in creating and refining
coercive interrogation techniques designed to induce high stress
levels and play on detainees' fears, says an article in the New
England Journal of Medicine. This was a likely violation of
professional ethics codes. Is this crossing the line?
If you don't believe the prisoners that have been released, because
both sides could be lying(?), how about a US interrogator/translator
who quit?
Saar told The Observer that prisoners were physically assaulted by
'snatch squads' and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques and
that the Geneva Conventions were deliberately ignored by the US
military.
He also said that soldiers staged fake interrogations to impress
visiting administration and military officials. Saar believes that the
great majority of prisoners at Guantánamo have no terrorist links and
little worthwhile intelligence information has emerged from the base
despite its prominent role in America's war on terror.
Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent
prisoners have spiralled out of control, doing massive damage to
America's image in the Muslim world.
Saar said events at Guantánamo were a disaster for US foreign policy.
'We are trying to promote democracy worldwide. I don't see how you can
do that and run a place like Guantánamo Bay. This is now a rallying
cry to the Muslim world,' he said
Among the most shocking abuses Saar recalls is the use of sex in
interrogation sessions. Some female interrogators stripped down to
their underwear and rubbed themselves against their prisoners.
Pornographic magazines and videos were also used as rewards for
confessing.
In one session a female interrogator took off some of her clothes and
smeared fake blood on a prisoner after telling him she was
menstruating. 'That's a big deal. It is a major insult to one of the
world's biggest religions where we are trying to win hearts and
minds,' Saar said.
Saar also describes the 'snatch teams', known as the Initial Reaction
Force (IRF), who remove unco-operative prisoners from their cells. He
describes one such snatch where a prisoner's arm was broken. In a
training session for an IRF team, one US soldier posing as a prisoner
was beaten so badly that he suffered brain damage. It is believed the
IRF team had not been told the 'detainee' was a soldier.
This continues to be borderline stuff except for the injuries but Saar
indicated it was frequent and widespread.
> > Bush&Co. 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.
This wasn't really out of the 9/11 Commission but someone who was
telling this independently and also told the 9/11 Commission. He quit
because he felt the Bush administration was being even less effective
than Clinton was in fighting terrorists.
> 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 former. The Church
> commission did a lot of good reigning in the excesses of the CIA. However,
> the CIA that emerged did have some serious structural problems. What
> seemed to be the unanimous opinion of the commission was that the CIA was a
> very ineffective organization, very much tied up in red tape.
I am not sure I agree with that - you do know that Bush appointed all
the members and restricted what they could investigate. What was
deliberately not looked at by the Commission was the extent the
intelligence was being fixed and how the rest of the administration
was using and manipulating this intelligence.
>
> There is a very tempting way to solve this problem: they way Alexander
> solved the problem of the Gordian knot. That I see as the best explanation
> for the actions of Bush et. al. Get rid of lawyerly complications by a
> getting understanding of the power of the Commander in Chief in wartime.
> End worries about, for example, Spanish judges who might indict American
> soldiers for reasonable acts in wartime, by getting a ruling that they are
> protected by following the legal orders of the Commander in Chief. Keep
> people from worried that, if they do what is needed to protect the US, such
> as interdicting dangerous nationals on the lam and returning them to their
> own countries for prosecution and punishment, that they will be subjected
> to all sorts of lawsuits by people more worried about dotting "i"s and
> crossing "t"s in procedures than defending the US against terrorists. Make
> sure the troops know that, in the war on terror, as long as the lawfully
> obey orders, they will be protected by the commander in chief.
I think they were less worried about Spanish judges than by future
American judges. I also think that is a very dangerous and wrong and
unconstitutional justification. What the President says does not make
it lawful; he is a citizen like any other, not a temporary King and
not above the law.
> I think you could guess that I don't think this is the best way to handle
> the problem; indeed I've long said that Bush et. al. have been doing a very
> poor job, but it has some important differences from "frat boys gone wild."
> One of them is that it appears that the administration did show
> self-constraint in their actions. If the Time story is accurate, then one
> gets a picture of a president who wants a fairly free hand in dealing with
> terrorists, but does not simply run wild because he thinks he has it.
> Rather, a fairly limited number (10 or so) are subjected to what the
> administration considers high stress questioning, using techniques that
> they think are acceptable, and that fall short of torture.
It is not clear what numbers are subjected to these techniques and
what techniques are used on other prisoners.
>
> So, going way back to the original point, I don't see how Gitmo is one of
> the most significant risks to our liberty today, let alone in the history
> of the nation.
I didn't say Gitmo, I believe I said this administration. OK, they
have only violated the Constitution on two US citizens. How many does
it take for you to say this is wrong? The administration has admitted
it was wrong in redefining torture after 9/11. The techniques they now
agree were torture were used. Is this a threat to liberty? (I am not
sure why we are resticting this to Gitmo and to a threat just to
liberty.)
>
> >GBay, a location under our control but not part of any state, was one way.
> >In a time of crisis the American people will go along with what the Prez
> > wants. As months and years go by they will start to evaluate his
> > wisdom and judgment or lack of it.
>
> That is true, but hyperbola does not help the process along. I think a
> very convincing, almost overwhelming case could be made for the
> incompetence of this administration. From having inexperienced
> 20-something year olds run the Iraq economy for about a year, to the
> understaffed and undersupervised prison system, to the myopic focus on what
> they "knew to be true" apart from the evidence, they seem to approach
> criminal incompetence in their foreign policy. Our own neo-con rated Bush
> at D-, for goodness sakes. But, over the top accusations switches the
> focus from what the administration has failed at to discussions of things
> they probably have not done. Most of the public tunes out the messenger at
> this point. Conspiracy theories, like Michael Moore's or David's might get
> traction with the faithful, but it turns off most of the electorate. It
> also angers the political opponents, who (reasonably enough) take it
> personally, and the chances of reasonable discourse are decreased.
With the current GOP leadership I don't think reasonable discourse is
possible. I also see this again coming down to accusing Democrats of
over the top actions when they are responding to outrageous behavior.
When Democrats are not accused of being over-the-top they are being
accused of being do-nothings with no-plans. Must be nice to be a
Republican.
> > I think you are reaching when you say the Geneva Convention says no
> > carrots and while beatings ("sticks") don't seem acceptable other
> > forms of disapproval may be.
> What stood out was unpleasant results for not answering questions. It
> appears to me that the Geneva convention both codifies and is the source
> for the "name rank and serial number" that we've all seen in movies.
> Basically, if one captures the soldiers from the other side, one is not
> suppose to pressure them into betraying their country.
>
> That may be an unreasonably strict interpretation, but it is a straight
> interpretation of "unpleasant." Perhaps this had a technical meaning that
> I didn't get; that is possible.
>
> > I don't think it is the only think we need to do but improving US
> > foreign policy would be one of the best things we could do.
>
> Well, simply having a more competent administration couldn't hurt. But,
> lets pull Bush out of it for a bit. Let's go back to the difficulties
> Clinton had fighting AQ. Yes, we didn't have a spectacular attack on 2000,
> but the criminal model for fighting AQ didn't work well with the attack on
> the Cole, and the embassy bombings. The WTC did get convictions, but at a
> price....AQ learned a lot about the counter-terrorism
> methods of the US and was able to circumvent them.
Clinton stopped a major attack on US soil by putting a task force on
it after receiving a warning. When Bush received a memo labeled
"Al-Qaeda determined to strike in the US" he continued his vacation
and did nothing. There were mistakes made by Clinton who was facing a
GOP Congress who repeated accused him of trying to wag the dog. The
Clinton team developed an assault plan on Al-Qaeda but held off
implementing it until after the election and then until after the new
President was sworn in. Connie Rice ignored it until after 9/11 and
then the Afghan part was used sucessfully. We had an American hero
who died on 9/11, former FBI, who said both the Clinton admistration
and the Bush administration stopped investigations when they got too
close to the Saudis. He was frustrated on the Cole investigation.
There has been no sign of any improvement under the Bush
administration and by any measurement terrorist attacks are increasing
and the number of terrorists is growing. The one exception is a major
attack in the US which had a highly random distribution. It would be
interesting to see if Bush has done anything effective to prevent
another huge failure like his 9/11..
>
> Bush has a clearly stated vision. The Democrats do not. I have
> difficulties with the substance of his vision, apart from his almost
> criminal clumsiness in carrying it out. But, the Democrats do not offer a
> real alternate vision. The far left does, but it doesn't appeal to me, and
> it certainly doesn't appeal to most voters. The only place that I've found
> anything close a counter vision, so far, is in Thomas Freeman's political
> columns. I've been pointed to other thinkers who have clearly articulated
> other viewpoints on a variety of issues (such as human rights and
> terrorism), but these tend to be on slightly narrower topics.
To have a vision you need to have a national spokesman. Who do you
think the Democrats have that get any airtime when the GOP is not
attacking them?
Thomas Friedman is a naive and pompous idiot but that is another issue.
How about this vision for foreign policy, I believe you are
restricting us to that, right? -
* Weakening the resolve of the nation's adversaries and reducing their
internal cohesion.
* Reinforcing the commitments of our allies to our cause and making
them empathetic to our success.
* Attracting the uncommitted to our cause.
* Ending conflicts on terms that do not sow the seeds for future conflicts.
That was a partial list from my blog of one of the more recent
military strategic thinkers and used as an example of this
administration failure but has often been articulated by Democrats.
I am curious, where do you get your information about Bush's vision?
Where do you get your information about Democrats lack of vision? Are
they the same place? Should your pool of information sources perhaps
be expanded?
Here is a recent article on a Democratic Foreign policy (and
disagreements among Democrats.) Is this a Democratic Vision -
perhaps? Or is it a far-left vision you disagree with?
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050718&s=schwenninger
Long article but concludes: In the end, it comes down to a question
of vision as well as of national interest. Many neoliberal Democrats
would like the United States to be the Second Coming of imperial
Britain, doing what Britain could not do in the 1920s and '30s. But as
we are learning in Iraq, and as we did in Vietnam, the American people
have no appetite for long, contested occupations of foreign lands. Nor
do they have an appetite for a long, unending religious conflict in
the Middle East. What they long for are not misguided heroic crusades
but the respect of other nations and better lives for themselves and
the many other people who share this planet.
Going beyond foreign policy how about this for Democrat visions.
1) Americans Needs a Raise - raise the minimum raise and reinstate the
original intention of workplace recognization of new unions
legislation.
2) Universal pre-school - could cite numerous studies.
3) Affordable health care for all - major industies are starting to
realize that their having to provide health-care is making them
non-competitive and cutting into profits.
4) An Apollo type program for energy independence from the Middle East
5) A true family values agenda with tax credits for day care and education.
6) Balancing the budget - nothing including the war on terrorism is
more important for the average American's long term security.
>
> I'll end this now, without going into a discussion of how a workable,
> clearly articulated counter-vision can be developed. But, it would make
for an interesting thread...albeit one that would require a bit of work
This required a bit of work.
>
> Dan M.
I will like to add a correction, in looking up, or trying to look up,
some information I noticed that according to JAG - "Although the
United States has not ratified Geneva Protocols I and II,
approximately 150 nations have ratified the Protocols, and the United
States considers many of the Protocol provisions to be applicable as
customary international law. OPERATIONAL LAW HANDBOOK, 11 (U.S. Army
Judge Advocate's School 2002)"
--
Gary Denton
http://www.apollocon.org June 23-25, 2006
Easter Lemming Blogs
http://elemming.blogspot.com
http://elemming2.blogspot.com
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