It's A Good Bet That . . .

Nope none at all.
Torture is practiced everywhere and I'm willing to bet if the situation were reversed he would have no problems.

The news keeps reporting that he has told where UBL is. If this is so, doesn't anyone think that UBL may be watching and will take off to someplace else if he feels he is in danger?

If you've ever seen the documentary "Karachi Kops" you'll have an inkling of what this guy has gone through and what he is going to go through! They are going to keep him in prison and torture him until they get the info they want. And all of that happens before the trial!

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Malcolm X, 1965

He should've been put on the last episode of "OZ" and gotten a salad tossing greeting from the ghost of Adebisi, if had my way.

The moment we start to torture or condone torture, is the start of adopting the traits and behaviors of the people in which we are defending/pre-emptive defense from.

Although this man is accused of certain crimes against humanity he should be considered innocent until proven guilty. After all, this is the way of life we are defending or is humans lives measured on their citizenship/heritage?

Please do not consider this as a Muslim defending another Muslim. This is simply a call to reason that in our anger we have lost our perspective of what is right and wrong.

Do I watch too many spy shows or have they not invented truth serums or developed mind control techniques?

They never seemed to have these problems on La Femme Nikita. Too bad all this stuff cannot just be some bad TV show!

La Femme Nkechi
...Be the change in the world you want to see...it starts with you

It's going to be a bad TV show on the 17th!!

Nobody should be tortured.

We do have other techniques, such as the "truth serums" (which basically are tranquilizers and anesthetics carefully administered to supress temporarily the critical functioning of the frontal lobe) and hypnosis (when it works), and these are nonviolent, assuming no drug sensitivity and reaction. These are better to use, and the most that we need to use. We do not need to use torture and we should not, even if we do not get the information that we want.

Torture harms the torturer far more than it does the tortured, and it damages the tortured severely. It is not needed. We must not use it. Questioning and imprisonment, even surveillance and drugs are acceptable, but not torture.

I have heard that sodium pentothal (truth serum) isn't truly effective. However, a Washington Times commentator has a solution that could balance out the concerns about humaneness, with the more crucial concern of getting information.

Interrogating KSM

As for what would happen if the situation were reversed, several sources, one of them an accomplice, say he is the one who killed Daniel Pearl.

yikes! human rights groups would have a conniption about inducing paralysis and denying a human the right to breath. Interesting concept about paralyzing the lungs, and diaphram, and forcing air in through the nasal passage. I would think he'd say "just go ahead and kill me" since he would be near death.

I have heard that such techniques as sleep interruption, isolation, blindfolding, shaving facial hair, stripping clothes, and inducing exhaustion are effective.

Wow, Lea - that's some editorial!! It's scary the way the writer can so cooly discuss ways to torture another hunman being - 21st century style or not.

The final quote says it all:

The only way to win the war against terrorism is to terrorize the terrorists into giving up their evil jihad.

Now is the time to make real the promises of Democracy.

I just read the article by Jack Wheeler. This is one sick individual. Aside from some technical problems with the scenario he describes, the joy he seems to derive in inflicting pain and suffering on another human being is simply reprehensible.

God has told you, O man and woman, what is good; and what does the SOVEREIGN ONE require of you but to do justice, and to be compassionate, and to walk humbly with your God?

It is a sad commentary, really, that we can be so cool about inflicting such terror on someone.

It is an illustration, though, of what we need to remember. The editorial is purely pragmatic: "It's ok to torture (or kill?) one clearly guilty person to save teh lives of many innocent people."

That has an attraction to it on its face. Who wouldn't want to save the lives of many innocent people (except terrorists, who have tehir own equation of "the greater good")? And if a member of my family or even I am among the saved, of course I would feel that the equation is a right one.

But is it really? What difference is there between traditional torture and this exquisitely refined psychological "method"? The fact that it doesn't leave marks? Not where we can see them, certainly, but there are marks. Such treatment can't help leaving some. And if KSM is willing to die by suffocation, then the "method" loses its effectiveness, and we are left only with the knowledge that we have terrorized and tortured.

No thanks. He is a repository of knowledged, certainly, and of knowledge that can more easily help us thwart planned terrorist acts. But we still have the best intelligence system in the world--not perfect but very good--and with the noninvasive methods that we can use, and the security and intelligence agencies doing their jobs, we can get what we need from him to add to what we can gather without him without being inhuman.

Just because others are inhumanly cruel doesn't mean that we must or even may sink to their animal level.

Whoa, that article was frightening. I would not doubt for an instant that just the method described has been (is being) employed somewhere.

To be honest, I'm conflicted on the issue of torture. My pragmatic self says, do what you have to do to get what you want. And as stated earlier, one "terrorist's" life for several "innocents", that's a no brainer.

However, my humanity says, there has to be another way to resolve the root cause of the terroristic act. Their actions don't happen in a vaccuum. And, rarely are there true angels or devils.

I know (or would like to believe) I could never (or at least in very few circumstances) be involved in the torture of another living thing. But I guess in the end, that's why we should leave the soldiering to the soldiers.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kweli4Real:
But I guess in the end, that's why we should leave the soldiering to the soldiers.

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The joke I heard this morning was that they have the wrong guy and that is really Ron Jeremy......

quote:

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Originally posted by ocatchings:

The joke I heard this morning was that they have the wrong guy and that is really Ron Jeremy......

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LOL - You may be right. There's one sure way to tell!



Now is the time to make real the promises of Democracy.

quote:

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The only way to win the war against terrorism is to terrorize the terrorists into giving up their evil jihad.

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And that is exactly how it's been done before (not by us). I don't want anyone putting cattle prods on someone's genitals, or ripping off fingernails, or go old-school Chinese "death by a thousand cuts" on 'em. But what I would hate more is another Sept. 11, and this guy was willing to perpetrate that the first time around, if there's another in the making he can't be allowed to keep that to himself.