I would go back to when the United Nations Convention against Torture came into force on the 26th of June, in 1987 that we signed up to.
Slippery slope I took to meaning that you are in a place where you can easily slip downwards without due care. It is not automatic that because the CIA used waterboarding they are going to end up acting like the nastiest regimes in the world. Not my point. My point was that cutting off fingers isn't what they were up to, it is worse as you agreed and thus using it as an illustration isn't helping in this case. But we're not discussing the Syrian government or Saddam's Iraq here.
Well if you can show me some convention, or any other thing that the UK signed to outlaw or say they wouldn't use torture I'm willing to go back further.
https://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl...t&documentId=0ED35000620A78B7C12563CD00518D84 article 5 and https://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl...t&documentId=C4300CD54E5455B6C12563CD00518D95 article 6 but its mainly article 5 that covers the treatment of POW. notice the USA have allways used the term` unlawful combatants` in an attempt to circumvent the Geneva conventions and the usa of torture.
Sorry i haven't read the article you linked to, would the Geneva conventions work from a legal standing, I.e would it allow for those responsible to be brought to trial before an international court.
Well if there is sufficient evidence, as this CIA Torture Report seems to provide re: Americas use of torture, if there was similar evidence re: the UK's use of torture, or being complicit in helping the US, would people want to see those responsible face prosecution. Although who knows what the UK government had removed from the CIA Torture Report before it was published.
numerous reports say it was names and dates of `assests` rather than details of renditions and torture so instead of saying `M15 agent joe blogs poured molten gold on the suspects head to give him the much wanted crown` - the name would be removed so `an M15 agent pored molten gold` etc
Most things i have read say the published report contains no reference to UK agencies, although also from what i have read the UK government initially said no redactions had been made, then done a U-turn and said they had requested for parts relating to national security to be removed.
Looking at it psychologically, it is. It's what people do. The same process that caused them to take the first step causes them to take the second. And the third. And then they habituate and before you know it: "Hey, how did we get here? Give it time. After all both regimes used to be friends with ours.
I agree with you. It's very easy to take the high moral ground, and say no torture under any circumstances. But that, I feel, does not reflect the realities of the World we live in. If we have suspects, and the stakes are as high as possibly preventing another 9/11, then those suspects must answer our questions.
This is not about taking the moral high ground; it's about calling it what it is. It's not "enhanced interrogation"; it's torture. Torture is evil. You may argue that it is a necessary evil, and you may even have very good, rational arguments for that. And that's fine, but you are not being the Good Guy. And again that's also fine, because you may have good, rational arguments for not being the Good Guy. But accept that you are not, and don't pretend to be one. I find it interesting that the US governmentals who argue that torture can be justified in certain specific circumstances seem to struggle with calling it "torture", and are annoyed at the publication of this report. Why so bashful? If you can justify you actions, you have nothing to hide, right?
It was me who originally brought up the fingers and let me just point out that I wasn't claiming they did cut off fingers but rather just used it as a randomly picked example of possible torture methods. The real point of my post was that you can't trust confessions obtained under torture. (even without torture there are plenty of false confessions, have a read through here if you are bored enough: https://www.reid.com/pdfs/doj2301_2399.pdf) (and since none of those who confessed to being terrorists got a fair trial the only measurement of "success" of the torture was confessions).
We seem to be largely skating past the fact that it serves no practical purpose and that these hypothetical "torture a dude to save your family" situations never exist. There's often a threat, but contrary to what 24 may have depicted, torturing somebody will basically never help you avert it. And the situations in which these people were being tortured weren't of this type anyway. They had them for an indefinite period of time, months. Nothing was at stake, nothing crucial would be gained, nothing terrible prevented. This kind of behaviour is revenge and sadism, not a last resort in the face of a ticking bomb.
