
Originally Posted by
Biggles
I haven't had time to read all this yet but there are a couple of points that have reaised their heads on this topic in the wider media.
Firstly, one or two EU countries (Poland being one) have been accused of hosting secret prisons and torture units.
If so, they are deep doo doo. They have signed agreements on human rights and will be fined heavily if this is verified.
Secondly, the only vestige of a fig leaf Bush and Blair have left on Iraq is that Saddam was a bad man who tortured people (largely, ironically, the same people we now appear to be torturing - Islamic militants).
Hobbes is right in that human rights and not torturing people is a relatively modern concept. The Church (both Catholic and Protestant) were very big on it a few hundred years ago. There is a natural urge to want to get back at those who are perceived as the enemy.
However, what history tells us is that the tortured confess to anything and tell their torturers what they want to hear. Those on the side of the tortured swear revenge and so the bloody cycle goes on.
The use of torture and the, what can only be described as insane, idea to blow up the Al Jazeera offices in Dubai would suggest to the watching world that our feet are made of the grubbiest of clay. It is time to get a new set of feet and some decent metal polish.
What has become a bit obscured is the fact that the critics are objecting/referring to the more benign methodologies (sleep deprivation, sensory overload, etc.) as incredibly heinous and brutal.
When such trespasses are viewed as equivalent to bamboo shoots, electrified genitalia, physical beatings and the like, we end up with no effective way to properly hone the points we wish to debate.
I am a fan of black-and-white debate, and generally abhor those who come equipped with palettes of varying shades of gray, but there
are occasions when distinctions must be made; I feel this is one of them.
I've made a bit of light of the issue of chemical treatments as a means of procuring information, but the actual use of (for example) sodium pentathol doesn't produce any lasting effect, and there are surely other options as well.
What many seem to object to more than anything else is that any particular method may actually be foolproof, and thus constitutes an unfair advantage, especially when the "no harm" aspect renders the "brutal and heinous" arguments (as well as those who use them) moot.
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