I have some questions about torture interrogations?

[othermeans]

Does Professor Dershowitz and the others who espouse this as a way of getting information want to allow torture of American citizens? Also since the prison scandal (where one of the accounts told how one Iraqi's son was tortured in order to extract information from him) I began to wonder if torturing children is also acceptable to them?

I'm serious. I know these sound like strange questions but who would have ever thought there would be a Harvard Law professor arguing the efficacy and morality of torture in America...

My assumption is that they want to allow torture of citizens of other countries but again I've never heard these questions raised.

[number6]

1. torture interrogations, probably lost their popularity now

..

[Eric J in MN]

2. I can't answer directly, but

I can't answer directly, but if no one else can either, you can search lexis-nexis.com under the words "Dershowitz" and "torture" to find his recent comments.

The charge is $3 per article.

[corriger]

3. question one is yes these people do/it is

yes this is what they have achieved. question two It is long past already occurring. Firstly abroad, now they are attempting in US domestic envornment.

[corriger]

4. Ps what is so strange regarding your question?

Beyond the obvious, I mean to say. US is and has been a torture state, they have merely hidden it rather well. And to add the american have been participating in such event abroad for many years. Now, they are bringing it closer to 'home' and for american citizen.

edit: spelling

[Oilwellian]

5. The people of this country...

need to take a moral stand against this type of behavior that's being done in our name, by our government. Raping, sodomizing and killing is NOT acceptable to us and we will NOT stand for it.

[Eric J in MN]

6. Please email Congress for human rights of prisoners

Please email Congress for human rights of prisoners.

More information in this thread I started:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1653584

[progdonkey]

7. high-value targets

I think Dershowitz' stance is that torture itself isn't necessarily a terrible thing; that is, if it takes torture to get someone to give up information that could save millions of people's lives, it's not totally a bad thing. This doesn't mean you go around torturing prisoners left and right, hoping someone will give up some information; nor does it mean using torture to extract a confession from someone to use against him in court.

Dershowitz acknowledged in an interview that torture often ends with very poor intelligence, since people will just make stuff up to get the torture to end. I think he accepts torturing known terrorists like Mullah Omar or al-Zarqawi: people who are established, high-ranking members of terrorist organizations. If Zarqawi (for instance) is likely to have information, and he is resistant to all sub-torture interrogation methods, why should the interrogators not torture him if thousands or even millions of lives could be saved? (I'm not saying I agree, but I think this would be Dershowitz' argument.)

The largest problem with the whole Abu Ghraib thing isn't that prisoners were tortured; it's that these prisoners were likely innocent (and, if they were guilty of something, it would be low-level), and were being tortured for kicks and, according to Hersh, as part of an operation to set up a network of informers who would provide local intelligence under threat of blackmail. There was never any indication that any of these prisoners would know anything at all beneficial to military intelligence. (The Taguba report indicates that accountability was so poor that MI couldn't even be positive whom they were torturing!)

It's very important to distinguish between Dershowitz, and the likes of Limbaugh and Inhofe. Dershowitz would support torture when used by highly trained operative with executive and judicial branch authorization on high-level targets who are extremely likely to have important operational information; Limbaugh and Inhofe support torture only if it's performed by white Christians on Arab Muslims.

While I'm not sure whether I buy the Dershowitz argument, I find the whole issue of torture/no-torture to be a red-herring: our focus should be on creating the conditions where the discussion need never arise. There is a saying in martial arts philosophy that if one finds himself in a fight, he's already failed.