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Two points get left off of posts that criticize torture.
There is silent debate in this country between those who silently claim torture is a necessary evil, and those who oppose it. Those who oppose torture must answer the other side if we are to get anywhere.
2. There are no life stories, that I know of, of people whose lives were ruined by being a suspect.
The follow is a discussion of A 7 and 9 year old tortured by the CIA in order to make them tell where their father was hiding.
http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/17/bush-torture-memos-align-with-account-that-911-suspects-children-were-tortured
Details concerning a number of real people in the above link.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed his 7 & 9-year old children were tortured into telling the US government his whereabouts. Recently detailed revelations came out about torture revealed by Obama and added to by the Red Cross, of US detainees being terrorized by the use of fake poison insects put on the victim’s body, matching Khalid’s accusation.
The government is wasting time with years of isolation and sleep deprecation, destroying people’s lives. If the US decides to use torture, and was open about it, the victims would be better off. If a US soldier in the field comes across a witness and demanded to know where the soldiers were hiding, grabbed the victim by the nuts and said talk, and when he said something, the US GI would squeeze harder and say you lie or tell me more, the victim would be better off than spending years in isolation and sleep deprivation.
The US never got anywhere torturing the baddest of the bad, look at Moussaoui’s proud behavior, showing no harm for years of torture, unless he avoided torture by constantly revealing garbage, as he all during his trial blamed his Jewish lawyer for his woos.
In the TV drama "24 hours" Jack Bouer makes life miserable for the badest of the bad.
In a real life version, someone would reveal a plan to sneak an A bomb into a US city, but refuse too many details so al Qaeda wouldn’t find out and torture his kids. So Bouer, by remote contrail TV, has someone torture his kids. The witness talks, and the city is saved, but from then on no more witnesses coming forward, many people fearing to even use the anonymous tip program.
We got to join the real debate in this country over torture which is with fantasy TV,
http://www.phillyimc.org/en/torturing-7-nine-year-old-successful-torture-not-what-tv-dramas-state#comment-33644
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/17619#comment-49803
http://capitolhillblue.com/blog/2419
RichardKanePA
5 Comments
Problem with the credibility of the assertion in the Raw Story piece that KSM’s children were tortured into telling the CIA where he was:
1. KSM knew what they knew.
2. He knew that they had been captured.
Wouldn’t he have gone into places they didn’t know about? We’re talking about pretty basic matters of security and need-to-know. Wouldn’t he have had places and contacts unknown to his sons?
I just don’t think it’s an open & shut case that torture helped the US to capture a significant bad guy.
Or perhaps he was told by his interrogators that his children were in custody and that they told the CIA where he was – resulting in his capture. Whether true or not this would imply to KSM that they may have been tortured, and faced additional torture unless he “talked”. The CIA would likely have to pass along some form of information that only KSM and his children knew in order for him to believe it. It would be incredibly demoralizing to hear this.
Another possibility is that another detainee passed this information onto him.
Both could be “true”, or they could also be told to KSM as CIA misinformation.
There may be other possibilities that I can’t think of.
Of course, your scenario is also a possibility. But here’s another. KSM did, in fact, move from another site, but learned from informants that his children were tortured…and gave up another site (perhaps one he never was really at, but told his kids). If the CIA went there he would know his children “gave him up”. In this case everything you suggest would be true…but what KSM said would also be valid.
There are no life stories, that I know of, of people whose lives were ruined by being a suspect.
Maher Arar would be one such person, but at least his government, Canada, compensated him for its part in his abduction and torture. He was unemployed through the time that link was written – at least two years after his return to Canada. His name still occasionally comes up in discussions of terrorism there.
A quick search would seem to indicate that he has gotten his life back together at least a little, but in a less understanding, or less affluent country, his life might have been ruined.
In response to: Cujo359,
Maher Arer wasn’t tortured at Guantanamo but sent back to Syria.
People who survived to testified at the Saddam trial weren’t as mentally scattered as some of the Guantanamo victims were. By creating rules then finding ways to sneak around them, the US has created far more mental anguish than the proudest of torture, past leaders.
One Guantanamo victim thinks his lawyer is the enemy and the guards his friends. Why isn’t this man in a mental hospital?
RichardKanePA
Hello Richard,
Actually it wasn’t Khalid Sheikh Mohamed who first alleged the boys had been tortured using insects, it was Ali Khan, the father of their then cellmate..
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/…..27s_father
And, of course, the biggest question is: Where are they and are they still alive ?
Just to clarify,
For Dan,
Heather