The laws of war in the war on terror

Chris

..and people under torture tend to tell you anything you want to hear - whether true or not.

Michael Greaves

If one takes as a reasonable definition of 'waterboarding' that found at http://tinyurl.com/fmcdt, it is inconceivable that a court or tribunal or other judicial body in the Common Law world would say that this fell outwith the definition of the actus reus of 'torture' in the 1984 Convention against Torture: "the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person".

Those who use the technique, those who order its use, those who aid and abet its use and those in a position of superior authority who either fail to prevent its use or, where it has taken place, fail to punish those who use it, all are guilty in some manner of the offence of torture.

Torture, as far as UK law is concerned, is an offence of 'universal jurisdiction', that is any person who is guilty of the offence may be prosecuted for it before a UK court, regardless of his nationlaity or the place where he committed the offence.

Whatever one's views about the efficacy of torture, it is an offence well established as part of customary international law.

Mugabe, Bush and others are thus liable to arrest by the UK police and to be tried here for ther responsibility as superiors for, at the least, failing to prevent its use or punish its use.

Verity

Oh, James, you are so po-faced for God's sake! "We're better than that."

Surely you are aware that waterboarding was commenly used in US fraternity hazes until a few years ago? University kids were undergoing it willingly to get into the fraternity of their choice!

Eventually it was stopped by university administrations as being too extreme for an initiation ceremony into a fraternity, but it had been entered into willingly before. No one warned applicants coming in the the following year, "Oooooooh, don't do the waterboarding deal! Better to give up the hope of being admitted to a top fraternity than undergo waterboarding!"

Give me a break!

George Steiner

Yes dear boy. But you assume the interogators are simple minded, like the general public. The interogators know what questions to ask and what answers to disregard. And if necessary use a little more water.

And Mr. Forsyth is a little wet himself as a man responsible for nothing more then getting the next piece of profound tripe out.

His civilisation is to do nothing but argue its morality ad infinitum.

Ruairidh

Chris: Only if asked simple questions by simple interogators. You're thinking of torture as a means to extract the false confession. This is not what the war on terror is about. Show trials are of no value.

The uncomfortable truth is that in the right hands waterboarding is a very effective method for getting accurate actionable intelligence from a terrorist with no interest in giving it to you. Allow it and some terrorist attacks will be thwarted. Deny it and they won't. If you decide to argue against torture / waterboarding from a moral position you must balance it against the fact that otherwise preventable attacks will kill countless innocents.

Johnathan Pearce

I love the way that Verity tries to liken torture to over-zealous initiation ceremonies at Animal House. What an absurd analogy she uses. There is no comparison and she knows it.

Max

Torture is never justified. The arguments in its favour here assume that the person being interrogated is guilty and has guilty knowledge. We stopped the death penalty precisely because we discovered that even due process makes mistakes.

It doesn't matter how much you torture an innocent man. If he has nothing to tell you then you will learn nothing.

We must never condone torture.

Max
http://theerrorlog.blogspot.com

Austin Barry

If homilies and pieties could defeat terrorism, then I'm with James. Since, however, such platitudes only seem, as evidence of weakness, to provide encouragement to our enemies then waterboarding and other perhaps more robust techniques should be available. This is an uncomfortable proposition but if it stops some fanatic trying to kill me on the way to work, well, I'll swallow my vestigial liberal tendencies and live with it.

Ted Tedford

I'm intellectually convinced of the case for detention of illegal enemy combatants, and the need for aggressive questioning. I'm even happy with the existence of Guantanamo Bay, although it would be better if it were on the continental US.

Emotionally I'm less certain, because I've been subjected to years of the equivalent of psychological waterboarding by human rights pressure groups (and their political and journalistic stooges) who want everyone to think that techniques mandated by democratically-accountable governments, subject to scrutiny by the judicial system, which take account of all the reservations of legal groups and human rights groups - and of terrorists and their front organisations - are somehow morally the same as, say, hammering pencils into the ears of teachers for having the temerity to teach something that their state doesn't agree with.

People don't like terms like 'extraordinary rendition' or 'aggressive questioning': "Ooooo!! Sinister circumlocutions by the scary neocons!!" But this debasement of the language has become necessary because the legal definition of torture has been so relentlessly expanded as to render it virtually meaningless. This is a result of concerted action by 'human rights' pressure groups, the relativist and posturing elements of the legal establishment in the US and UK, and the apologists for tyrannical regimes and their unelected proxies in the UN and other transnational groups. All these groups would rather take on the democracies, because it's more lucrative and it's less risky, either to their reputations or their lives. The thugocracies have a vested interest in this process and the omnivorous definitions it because it bestows a dubious moral equivalence between their own vicious and unregulated activities and those of the accountable, elected governments in the west.

The people who benefit from this misguided activism are not those most likely to be *actually* tortured by states such as China or Zimbabwe or Libya. After all, why should Mugabe stop torturing people?Bush does it. And who wants to waste time trying to extradite Mugabe, when they could be suing an RUC constable for making someone stand up too long? The beneficiaries are human rights activists and lawyers in jurisdictions where a political-biased and morally-cretinous legal system will happily constrain the freedom of action of its own governments.

The long-term losers are the victims of and campaigners against *genuine* torture regimes, who will never get anywhere because everyone is so busy beating up on the soft targets like the US and the UK. In the long run we all suffer because our governments lose the clarity of will - and the habit - for defending this descent into relativism.

CS

***The uncomfortable truth is that in the right hands waterboarding is a very effective method for getting accurate actionable intelligence from a terrorist with no interest in giving it to you. Allow it and some terrorist attacks will be thwarted. Deny it and they won't. If you decide to argue against torture / waterboarding from a moral position you must balance it against the fact that otherwise preventable attacks will kill countless innocents.***

A trite observation.

Everything has to be balanced against the need to prevent the killing of countless innocents - the mantra used now to justify any erosion of the principles on which our society is built.

You could probably help to protect the lives of countless innocents by locking up everyone in Britain with a dark skin or a dodgy accent. But we accept that there are some things that are beyond the pale.

What you need to ask yourself is, when all our rights have been taken away, when we can be locked up indefinitely without charge or trial, when evidence for charges can be collected by torture, when all political protest and demonstrations have been outlawed, when we've banned any thought which offends a tabloid editor, what exactly will be the value of these countless innocent lives we're trying to protect?

Lives which consist of little more than sitting on your fat arse, dribbling in front of the TV, a remote in one hand and a can of cheap lager in the other, because individuality of thought or action no longer exists? A society of millions who dare not have an idea. Well, a terrorist could end a thousand of such lives and it would be no great loss.

Nicholas

It is torture. However you dress it up and justify it. When Japanese military policemen did this at Shamshuipo POW camp in Hong Kong during the Second World War (to extract information about a hidden radio) they were subsequently tried as war criminals and hung.

So is it just the circumstances that provide the moral justification for torture? I am a little confused about what our civilised Western values have become and what they mean.

One thing that is apparent is the increasing presumption of guilt for anyone picked up by the security forces (which now include, unfortunately, the police). Is it justifiable to torture an innocent person because he is thought to be a terrorist and to have crucial information? Are we to presume that everyone arrested and subjected to such treatment must be guilty? That seems to me to deny some very fundamental aspects of our justice system.

And if abandoning long held beliefs in the face of terrorism is important, how do we define the terrorist threat to warrant such action? And what are the implications for the outcome when we adopt such methods?

Are there other ways to fight terrorism? Is the focus on water-boarding, or 42 days or whatever, an indication of how strategically and tactically bankrupt we are? Of how ignorant we are of the lessons of past conflicts?

Is the proposition "I don't want to be blown up on the way to work or in an aeroplane going on holiday so I am happy for security forces to do anything they need to make that less likely - even if it means that some innocent people might be tortured."?

THX1138

Sometimes this board throws up the really extremists opinions of regular contributors such as verity & George Steiner, torture being a good example.

You can use all your weasel words & ridiculous comparisons to frat house high jinks you like but torture is just plain WRONG & it represents the evil we are fighting against all the time we resort to their methods we lose just ask John McCain.

The very critical difference between a journalist being waterboarded & genuine torture victim is that the journalist understands that it will stop on his command & he won't die not a luxury afforded to a prisoner in a black site in Eastern Europe.

Charlie

Part of the reason that we have a threat from Islamic Jihadi terrorism was because the authorities ignored this threat which started to emerge in the mid 1980s.Sadat was murdered by the Muslim Bretheren in 1981. Abdul Haq, the Pushtun leader warned about the dangers of arabs with an extreme muslim theological viewpoint in the 1985, both to Afghanistan and the West. Later the collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeat of the communists in Afghanistan, the West went to sleep. The inability to protect the muslims in Bosnia from the Serbs, the muslims in Chechnya from the Russians and inability to start rebuilding Afghanistan after the expulasion of the Taliban were defining moments in the development of the Muslim Jihadi mentality as it showed the West to be indifferent to the murder and rape of muslims. The utter incompetence and apparent cowardice shown by the West which allowed the Sarajevo massacre to occur ought to be a cause for public contrition from our political leaders. When muslim leaders wanted help from the police to expel Abu Hamza from Finsbury Mosque they were ignored. If we provided effective support to those muslims who wanted the law in a democratic country to be upheld and protection from violent aggressors, all the information required to defeat the Jihadis would be forthcoming. The inability to admit to our mistakes undermines the position of the democratic muslims and provides support to the jihadis.

Ray

As the French once discovered in Algeria and the Americans more recently have at Abu Ghraib, one of the most dangerous aspects of permitting torture is not just the effect it has on the tortured, but also the way it subtly dehumanises the torturers.
Surely the whole purpose of our war against Islamic fanaticism is to prove that we are capable of a moral reflex that our opponents are not.

Chuck Unsworth

Frankly I'm disgusted at Hitchens' weakness and lack of moral fibre. The whole practice of torture is revolting and entirely inhumane - and I'm commenting as an ex-soldier who has been in some 'interesting' situations. Sure, it's OK to kill and maim on the battlefield, but it's another thing entirely to do such ghastly things to powerless captives.

Hitchens and those who support him clearly have never come up against an armed enemy, have never had to make the decision to kill or not. They are monstrous and amoral.

Arthur

Or alternatively just deport the sods.

Nicholas

CS & THX1138 - good comments and I agree with them.

Ted Tedford

Nicholas, THX, CS: Agreed: Torture is wrong. Comparing it to hazing is wrong, and tasteless to boot. We need to adhere to a presumption of innocence. And 'torture' is very probably counter-productive, and often unreliable. On balance, water-boarding probably is torture and shouldn’t be used.

But it is also wrong - and counter-productive - to define torture so widely as to include, say, making someone stand up for four hours, and to say that such activities are 'beyond the pale'. There is a moral difference between threatening to kill or mutilate someone, and making them believe that you will do so, and actually killing or mutilating them. Failing to acknowledge that difference trivialises the enormities committed by genuine torture regimes, makes it harder to end genuine torture-as-policy, and frustrates a sensible debate.

I'm not advocating 'torture' of 'innocents', but it's indicative of the debate that you don't distinguish between, say, someone detained on the battlefields of Afghanistan and someone arrested in a police raid in the UK. It is also illustrative that THX cites 'black sites' in 'Eastern Europe' rather, say, a state-run prison in Tripoli or Tehran.

Besides, as Mr Hitchens suggests, you'll probably get more out of detainees by being nice to them anyway, which surely would be the preference. But it's irresponsible and an unserious position to deny our interrogators - professionals, subject to the law - the opportunity to focus, after due legal scrutiny, more coercive techniques on specific people.

I understand the concerns people have, and it is important that this process acknowledges and incorporates sensible objections. But it is fundamentally dishonest to rule all forms of coercive interrogation as 'torture'. There is a debate to be had about the acceptable limits, but it is dominated currently by emotion, not common sense. I do not accept that mine is an 'extremist' position, nor do I think that my 'pragmatism' is evidence of moral corruption.

Ian C

The world needs to get real. Any method that does permanent damage/harm should be 'torture'. Anything that does not is accptable. That way only those with the expertise to administer questioning will be handed the (sometime but regrettably necessary) task, and if they go too far they are responsible and noone else.

Verity

Well, well, the preachy, uppity Jonathan Pearce heaves into view with a dismissive opinion. There's a surprise. And he is under the impression that he knows something about the structure of American college life.

Once again, Jonathan Pearce, waterboarding was commonly practised by some fraternities in the United States during hazing week. Spelled w-a-t-e-r-b-o-a-r-d-i-n-g. The same exercise.

Eventually, the presidents and boards of governors declared it way over the top and put an end to it, but until then, pledges were undergoing it, of their own free will, as part of hazing week.

By any stretch of a imagination, this is not an absurd analogy.

Pearce writes: "There is no comparison and she knows it." There is a strong,legitimate comparison (save that US college kids were participating voluntarily). I suggest a new torture to be introduced to Gitmo would be being lectured to by Jonathan Pearce for hours on end. But James Forsyth might deem that too cruel, too.

CS

So, Verity, do give us more of your insight into fraternities. This waterboarding hazing, were they subjected to it regularly over a period of weeks or months? Surely even the most brutal of hazers would recognise that they must have been allowed some free time for study and exams. And, if they indicated that they couldn't take any more, were they ignored and subjected to more waterboarding until they broke or did they suffer the worst torture of all - being let up and told they couldn't join the fraternity?

And, while we're on the subject of the War Against Terror, I reckon these soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are little girls to be moaning about the danger posed by insurgents and the Taliban. When I was little and we played cowboys and indians, I was always having guns fired at me and it never did me any harm. Of course, they were plastic cap guns but hey, they've both called guns so it must be the same thing.

THX1138

Ted Tedford- I only used Black sites in Easter Europe as an example because I thought we were talking about US agencies using waterboarding, I'm more than happy to condemn tortures where ever they ply their evil trade from the dungeons of Damascus & Tehran to Bagram Air base.

As my mother used to say "you catch more fly's with sugar than salt"

Verity

In addition, Jonathan Pearce adopts the traditional leftist position of sneering at, and attempting to belittle, the United States.

The American fraternity and sorority system works very well indeed and is a strong networking structure that lasts for life. It's not "Animal House". "Animal House" was a comedy about louts.

Nicholas

Verity you are wrong on this. There is no comparison with the free will hazing and the imposition of real duress on a helpless human being, utterly dependent upon his captors. Have we forgotten what happened in Europe during the German occupation and the sordid activities in those interrogation rooms in Paris and other capitol cities?

Do we really want to emulate that? That is truly falling for the perverted "national security" vision of Herr Braun and his national socialist cabal. It is also counter-productive. Those subjected to torture become heroes and martyrs and even more hatred is stored up against us.

As for Gitmo and calling the inmates "enemy combatants" that is an affront to the very worst of POW camps. Either they should be considered as POWs and treated as such or as criminals and subjected to the normal rule of law.

Frank Pulley

Jonathan Pearce,

Shelve this torture shtick for a sec and put us all out of misery - are you taking over from Motty now that he has hung up his sheepskin? I think we should be told. Moreover, it would be nice to know whether you'll receive a Jonathan Woss type salary, if you are.

Btw - I am against all torture; particularly having to impotently watch my country being sold wholesale down the river by its government.

One form of torture that can be avoided is phil's posts. My method is acquired refelex use of the scroll key. Same thing for the Water torture that is also applied here almost daily. Both can be described as 'cruel and unusual punishment'.

Frank Pulley

Nicholas (3.27pm)

A succinct, powerful and persuasive argument. Barabarity used against barbarity is barbarity multiplied, not barbarity 'squared'.

Ted Tedford

Nicholas: Verity *is* wrong, but he's not really representative of an alternative position! Your comments illustrate a false either/or, and are examples of how language and law have failed to take account of a changing situation. You use the term 'torture' but seem implicitly to accept the assertions of the human rights lobby that anything beyond asking 'the big four' in a quiet voice is 'torture'. I don't agree - though I think the 'debate' has moved too far to be able to re-negotiate the term.

On a technical point, POW status was designed to ensure decent treatment of participants in inter-state conflict, members of trained armies, acting in the name of a state. Describing AQ fighters detained in Afghanistan as 'prisoners of war' is an affront to the personnel of modern western armies, who (a) wear uniforms, (b) are part of a lawfully-accountable chain of command, (c) carry their weapons openly and (d) are accountable for their own actions under military law. AQ etc fighters have wilfully abandoned POW status and should not be awarded it. 'Illegal enemy combatant' very neatly describes what they in fact are. AQ is not a legal entity, and not subject to any international law. That is no reason not to accord them their human rights, but that's a very different proposition from saying we should not create a different legal category for them.

Equally, current criminal processes are not suitable for such circumstances. What do we charge them with? Loitering? Possession of a firearm? Intent to murder? How many appeals do they get? To which jurisdiction?

No, we haven't forgotten the abuses of the Nazi and Soviet states. But, bearing in mind all the points where we agree, there is really no excuse to caricature the contrary position as being like Nazi-occupied France. The Gitmo-Gulag comparison is simply wrong. Gitmo is the only 'prison camp' where the departing inmates have *gained* weight and improved in health. To equate it with labour, torture and extermination camps is morally twisted. Some 25 former inmates - out of several hundred that *have* been released after a due process not available to traditional POWs - have been re-captured fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq. The current settlement is deplorable, but it's not 'the west's gulag'.

THX: You're right about flies, and I suspect most US interrogators recognise this, and would *instinctively* use persuasion in preference to coercion. But it's wrong to deny them the freedom of action to use more aggressive actions, and equally wrong to caricature such techniques as 'torture'. *That* plays directly into the hands of our opponents.

THX1138

Verity- I'm so glad that the two great men standing for President of my beloved USA would find your views on torture and much else abhorrent.

Verity

CS - Do stop drooling, there's a good chap. You clearly know nothing about the American fraternity system and sound terribly needy and cross. All a lefty has to do is see the words United States, or America for a red haze to come down over his "brain" and lose all sense of direction.

Why are you asking me about fraternity practices? Unlike you, I'm not an expert on everything. I know that waterboarding happened in some fraternities and is now forbidden. Don't write asking me any more sneering, sarcasm-laden questions because that is all I know.

Frank Pulley - Who's Motty?

Nicholas

Ted Tedford: my point about the Nazi occupation was in respect of real torture and not in respect of Gitmo which was intended as a separate comment. I have no illusions about what is torture and what is not.

I fully accept your point about POWs but still think the Gitmo approach is flawed and has been largely counter-productive. It is ammunition for those on the other side and those who would much rather critically examine the conduct of the West than the conduct of terrorists.

ndm

The New York Times makes the most significant contribution to the debate on torture this week by reporting that a 1957 article titled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War" was used to train interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

-- Second, one form of torture was experienced by a considerable number of Air Force prisoners of war during efforts to coerce false confessions from them. The prisoners were required to stand, or sit,
at attention for exceedingly long periods of tinme-in one extreme case, day and night for a week at a time wvith only brief respites. In a few cases, the standing was aggravated by extreme cold. This form of torture had several distinct advantages for extorting confessions.
http://tinyurl.com/5ejuwu

Your average everynight fratboy initiation ceremony!?

Verity

THX1138 - Your "beloved USA". You're not an American and you have posted elsewhere that you will never go back there. You think the Americans have no right to police their borders when it means personal inconvenience for you.

My views on torture are probably very close to those of
Mr McCain. I do not, however, hew to the lefty line that waterboarding is torture.

Waterboarding is extremely unpleasant and frightening, but they know that no one dies of it.

I agree with Ted Tedford above, and would also point out that in addition to gaining weight on American food in Gitmo, there is a large of number who, on release, start an application for a Green Card.

The left, as always, transparently tries to manipulate language. Waterboarding is horrible, but it is not torture as traditionally defined. We must not allow the left to degrade our language by trying to append new meanings to words that people have understood for centuries.

There are a lot of lefties participating in this blog who become angry and irrational when presented with an opposing view.

Herbert Thornton

Torture for the sake of torture or for the sole purpose of punishment is one thing and is obviously uncivilised.

But torture that is effective in extracting information from a terrorist is an entirely different matter. Then, surely the only question that should be asked is - does it work? The fact that an especially recalcitrant terrorist may provide false information or information that is partly false has nothing to do with it.

As for waterboarding, why bother arguing whether or not it amounts to torture. The only sensible question is - does it work?

We need to apply less emotion and more common sense, as for example do Austin Barry and Ruairidhr.

Wilf

Bravo, Ted Tedford. Entirely persuasive.

The failure to act in one's own defence against a ruthless and unprincipled enemy, with whom there is no reasoning, is no better than unconditional surrender.

Waterboarding may be unpleasant, but it is a whole lot better than losing your face and fingers in a burning tube train.

Verity

ndm - "Your average everynight fratboy initiation ceremony!?"

Please, please, please, please, don't comment on American mores and terminology because your wannabee smart answers are cringingly off.

In addition, you also know absolutely nothing about WWII.

You paste, with an air of knowing revelation, "Second, one form of torture was experienced by a considerable number of Air Force prisoners of war during efforts to coerce false confessions from them."

NSS! This has been widely known since WWII. The Japs in SEA were the major practitioners. How dare you sneeringly refer to what those brave men enduring as "frat boy initiation ceremony"? Your impertinence is nauseating.

If these practices were new to you, you are badly read.
Doubtless you know all the words to The Internationale, though.

Nul points.

Mr Potarto

Verity: "Waterboarding is extremely unpleasant and frightening, but they know that no one dies of it."

A bit like having your fingernails pulled out or electric shocks to the genitals.

TGF UKIP

I was already very seriously alarmed reading many of the posts above to see that so many of those Coffee Housers who I had greatly previously admired and respected turning out to be instinctive Guardianistas on this issue.

But then I came to the Frank Pulley post adressed to Jonathan Pearce "are you taking over from Motty now that he has hung up his sheepskin?" Is this CH Jonathan Pearce the same as the BBC's high pitch voiced, semi hysterical football commentator of the same name? If he is and is, indeed, stepping into the shoes of the pillock Motty then that really can only confirm Sky as being the only football channel.

More relevantly, though,it will also solve the problem of an alternative to waterboarding - 90+ mins of being forced to listen to a Jonathan Pearce football commentary will have even the most hardened AQ prisoner sobbing his heart out, divulging everything and begging for mercy - and that's just after the first five minutes. The result will be of course that the UN, Amnesty, the EU, the Guardian with its CH friends and the Archbishop of Canterbury/Elizabeth will all agree that it would be cruel and inhuman punishment of such a degree that a return to waterboarding could be deemed more than acceptable.

BTW Ted Tedford seems to me to be bang on but for a pithy summary of where a judgement on the issue should be I would commend my "friend" Ian C. Sorry Ian.

Frank Pulley

Verity

Motty? The renowned John Motson, veteran football commentator with a penchant for myriad factoids that get neatly woven into his commentary - and the occasional howler that hits the headlines? I think someone once published a book of Mottyisms - similar to Private Eye's Colmanballs. He's about to retire after a zillion 'Matches of the Day' and will probably thereafter occupy the spare plinth in Trafalgar Square; mind you some think he is like a spare plinth at a wedding; but then you can't please allathepeeple allathetime. Apparently your protagonist JP will inherit Motty's job. I think I remember that you're less than keen on football, but as you've scored a good few goals, some by overhead kick, and committed several fouls involving an accidental (on purpose) boot in the Niagras of some of the trolls we have encountered on the blogs we have kicked around on for the past 5 or 6 years, you're entitled to know that. :-))

Commondog

CS.

Nice one.

You take it upon yourself to judge people thus:

"a remote in one hand and a can of cheap lager in the other... Well, a terrorist could end a thousand of such lives and it would be no great loss."

Yet in the same passage, you complain about those who seek to protect innocents because theirs is "the mantra used now to justify any erosion of the principles on which our society is built".

Which way do you want it?

You can exterminate the untermensch OR you can pretend to some moral high ground.

Commondog

THX 1138.

Why would I want to ask John McCain about this?

Max Kaye

I'm against torture in principle - but with Jack Bauer in practice when a time-bomb is ticking....

Inconsistent? yep...

ndm

Actually, Verity, I was mocking your description of waterboarding as being nothing more than "fraternity hazes" when I used the phrase "your average everynight fratboy initiation ceremony." I assumed, wrongly it seems, you would be smart enough to understand.

I was puzzled, however, by your assertion that I "know absolutely nothing about WWII," since it was pretty clear from the title that the report was not about WWII since - as you know, being much more knowledgable than me about WWII - the Communists were actually on our side in that war. The report was about the treatment of US prisoners captured in the Korean war.

I do love your phrases though - "wannabee smart answers," "air of knowing revelation" and "impertinence is nauseating." You seem to view them as a substitute for rational thought.

Ruairidh

CS: You think it is a trite observation to say that getting terrorists to talk will stop plots and save lives. Regardless of whether or not you think it is trite it is true.

Your absurd slippery slope comparison is no equivalent. Nobody is suggesting that every suspect is waterboarded in the way you imply by your sarcastic suggestion to detain everyone with a dark skin. The argument (should you want to stop patronising and start following the events in the real world) concerns the cases where high value AQ are detained. KSM is the classic case study but there are others. The architect of 9/11, the murderer of thousands and the head of operations for AQ at the time of his detention it was known KSM would have knowledge of live terrorist plots breaking over the coming months. When you catch someone like this you know you have a limited time to get information from him. The news that he has been detained will slowly leak and therefore plots that have a link to him will realise the risk and change their plans, ditch their comms etc. You have a choice between a nice respectful interrogation that will get nowhere fast or something harder like stress positions or waterboarding. If you reject the harder option as unethical you must accept you are also losing the opportunity to stop those plots using your detainees knowledge. In some cases the plot will be stopped anyway but not always. This is the classic ‘ticking problem’ beloved by TV and Film. You may think it trite but from time to time it does happen in the real world too. KSM was waterboarded, and there are people alive today because of it. So explain to me why waterboarding KSM is wrong without using a silly 1984 parody.

ndm

Ruairidh asks:

-- So explain to me why waterboarding KSM is wrong without using a silly 1984 parody.

and the official US Government 9/11 Commision Report answers:

-- [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] maintains that he and Yousef began thinking about using aircraft as weapons while working on the Manila air/Bojinka plot, and speculated about striking the World Trade Center and CIA headquarters as early as 1995.

In other words, the thinking about 9/11 started a full 6 years before the attacks occurred.

9/11 report: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/sec5.pdf

Ruairidh writes:

-- When you catch someone like this you know you have a limited time to get information from him. The news that he has been detained will slowly leak and therefore plots that have a link to him will realise the risk and change their plans, ditch their comms etc. You have a choice between a nice respectful interrogation that will get nowhere fast or something harder like stress positions or waterboarding.

Not a word of this is true. News of the capture of "someone like this" would have spread within hours to those with a "need to know." The idea that we need to physically torture "someone like this" to gain vital information is belied by the evidence from the Biderman report on "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War" that physical torture does not work. Of course, there will always be some who get a buzz from fantasizing about torture.

Ruairidh

Of course I meant to say 'ticking bomb problem'.

Ruairidh

Ndm wrote: “In other words, the thinking about 9/11 started a full 6 years before the attacks occurred.”

How is that an answer to my question? If anything it supports my case that KSM would have the next six years of AQ spectaculars in his head at the time of arrest.

ndm goes on to say “Not a word of this is true. News of the capture of "someone like this" would have spread within hours to those with a "need to know." The idea that we need to physically torture "someone like this" to gain vital information is belied by the evidence from the Biderman report on "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War" that physical torture does not work. Of course, there will always be some who get a buzz from fantasizing about torture.”

It is clear that your expertise on the security arrangements of Al Qaida is limited. They operate in a highly disengaged way precisely to avoid detection. It is not as if Osama and Khalid are on the mobile chatting every other night. Long periods of no contact or contact via hand couriered correspondence are common at the top. The relationship between AQ operational coordinators and cell leader can be equally distant. Anyway the time constraint is only partially down to the leaking of the news. The other part is the time it takes for a developing plot to be completed. As you’ve demonstrated this can be years. So even if the cell leader of a given plot changes his comms you still have a chance of catching him if you get the old comms details from the detainee. You’re slightly behind but you have a chance until the cell is ready to execute their plans but the clock is ticking.

Also you show your ignorance of the war on terror if you think it is comparable to soviet attempts to extract “false confessions” from military personnel. This is not about show trials or recantations of democracy and capitalism. This is about uncovering genuine terrorist plots and the interrogation of senior AQ has done precisely that.

I also take offence at your suggestion that I get “a buzz from fantasizing about torture”. It is a groundless personal attack.

Torture is morally abhorrent but despite ndm’s claims it does and has worked (in the area of counter terrorism). The ticking bomb problem remains.

Ruairidh

I’ve found the report you cited ndm. The report notes that physical torture does not work when it comes to the mental conditioning the communists were seeking. It says nothing of uncovering genuine intelligence being deliberately held back. As evidence that ‘torture does not work' it is a poor report to cite, in balance it rather suggests it does.

A link to the report cited by ndm.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1806204&blobtype=pdf

TGF UKIP

All this business about torture not working really does sound a load of crap to me. Unless I, and everyone else I've ever talked to on subjects remotely connected to this, are entirely unrepresentative of the rest of the human race, extreme pain, or, more accurately the threat of it, would guarantee full divulging of everything I knew.

Which, of course, leads to the handwringing hypocrisy of the intelligence agencies being forced by the irresolution and squeamishness of the politicians to subcontract interrogations to countries without the benefit of a Guardian or New York Times reading elite.

Verity

TGF UKIP - Quite. Some countries are not graced with the great - and compassionate! - minds of those all-knowing mahatamas who work at the BBC. And The Guardian.

Ian C

You were obviously up late last night Verity. I have not had time to read all these posts but it seems to me that education is little guide to what is right and wrong, certainly out on these edges of 'international relations'.

TGF - your views and mine are rarely far apart. Mine are more based in practical reality (aka pragmatism) than hard and fast principle, on which petard it is too easy to get hung.

In the anti-all torture argument that hanging will occure when someone in custody is released without being squeezed to the full. In the case I have made it is when an operative or his seniors go too far beyond the pale with disgusting consequences. It seems that the unelected institutions of the media, NGO's and judiciary have gained the upper hand in this debate. It means a major atrocity is not far away and then watch the whiplash..!