We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I don't believe in torture. It demeans them and it demeans us.
You have no IDEA of what you're talking about. The people who were on the "receiving end" of these methods are ALREADY our enemies and are quite unlikely to change their minds. They were the RING LEADERS and dedicated adherents to their fanatical religious ideology.
They have no regard for your silly rules of conduct and will not respond to your "kinder, gentler" methods of questioning regarding their knowledge of further attacks against innocent people. Furthermore, given their status as illegal combatants, they're damn lucky they aren't placed in front of a firing squad and shot as a saboteur/spy/terrorist.
We used to shoot these kinds of people, but apparently no longer. Too many touchy feely people like you who are more sympathetic towards the perpetrators than they are toward victims.
You're willing to see thousands (millions?) of innocent people die needlessly because you're too afraid to cause some temporary pain and discomfort towards their murderers.
There is a place for law and order. There is a place for respecting prisoners who have fallen into your hands. But that's only the case when those prisoners have not clearly violated the law of war, the Geneva Conventions, as well as any moral law that we can imagine. Furthermore, I would never condone wanton abuse of a prisoner for sheer sadistic "entertainment".
If I knew that one of my prisoners possessed critical knowledge of operations/personnel involved in targeting and killing innocent civilians, I'm going to do what is necessary to ensure that those people have the best chance of survival possible. But I'm not going to kill him, and it's quite unlikely he/she would would have any permanent marks to bear witness.
I can say this with some comfort as I was involved with a group of folks who eventually hunted down and killed Abu Musab Al-Zarkawi. Had we captured him, I'm sure he would have been assigned some "special treatment". But we wound up killing him instead.
You don't have any problems with our killing him, now do you?
Hawk |
