Re: [A-List] Justifiable torture

["Chris Burford" <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The torture of the porgnographic SM images appears to have been mainly
in the humiliation of showing them to the victims. These appear to be
methods made widespread by the "Resistance to Interrogation" R2I
methods taught in the UK and the US to special forces and pilots to
teach them to withstand severe torture, without leaving too many marks
on them. Devised and supervised by non clinical psychologists.

Their spread appears to have been accelerated by the neo-con policy of
using private agencies for a number of task in Iraq, including
preparing people for the attentions of Military Intelligence. As
private contactors they have recruited free-lance retired members of
these special forces, who are in a grey area legally where it is very
unclear whether they can be held accountable under US, Iraqi or
international law for their abuse of people.

However the story reported by the BBC in todays New York Times of
torture of Al Qaeda leaders is consistent with the Neo-Cons links with
and support for muscular Israeli use of torture in crushing the
Palestinian resistance.

It is clear that the neo-cons tacitly or somewhere explicitly, have
favoured a policy of torture in imposing US hegemony despite their
editorial of the issue of May 17 "A Few Bad Men", stating "we were
made uneasy by the indiscriminate orgy of outrage in Washington last
week"

- interesting in terms of English style how the orgy at Abu Ghraib has
slipped into being an orgy in Washington.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/066zpubb.asp

Torture is counterproductive for the USA's hegemonic purposes, but
that is another question.

Chris Burford


----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "The A-List" <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;
<TheNewForum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 5:05 AM
Subject: [A-List] Justifiable torture


> The arguement has been made that torture sometimes does provide
> critically useful information that saves lives.
> Those who make this arguement need to ask whether any useful
information
> were extracted from the victims of torture whose photographs the
world
> has senn in recent days.  The military is silent on that
information,
> preferring to let the force abstract rationale carry the day.  Since
> between 70-90% of the prisoners were admittedly wrongly detained,
that
> they were in fact innocent civilians caught up in a net of feeding
> frenzy,that they could not possibly have any information that would
be
> remotely of interest to military intelligence,  torture then serves
no
> purpose except to dehumanize a alien population.
>
> Henry C.K. Liu
>
>