I’m going to start out this article with some information that I’ve gathered while researching whether information acquired through torture is indeed viable for prosecution.
Here’s an excerpt from an article by Anne Applebaum published Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A21. The original article can be viewed here.
By contrast, it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was “not nice,” he says. “But we did not physically abuse them.” Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet — as he remembers saying to the “desperate and honorable officers” who wanted him to move faster — “if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy’s genitals, he’s going to tell you just about anything,” which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn’t know “any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea.”
Another article from MSNBC titled “Does Torture Really Work?“, written by Clint van Zandt, a former Interrogator during the Vietnam war states:
The fact is that no “trial by ordeal,” be it physical, psychological or chemical will insure that we can: (1) actually get information from the detainee, and (2) guarantee that what ever information extracted is true, a reality with which most interrogation “experts” will agree.
These are two sources, and there are many more, from “experts” ranging across both political aisles that clearly show that torture methods are not reliable sources of information.
All that being said I just heard that 6 of the detainees in Guantanmo Bay are planned to be sentenced – to be executed that is. First of all, I’m strictly against the death penalty and I think it’s a crying shame that we claim to be a civilized country where we use methods that say Middle Ages like nothing else.
What bothers me about all this and it should bother every citizen in this country, is the fact that we are not doing what would be considered a fair trial. Let’s go back roughly 50 years and look at the Nuremberg trials. There, for the whole world to see, we held fair and open trials. A trial against those people who had committed the atrocities of WWII, from killing political opponents, to erecting gas chambers where millions of Jews were exterminated, to waging war against the rest of the world – everyone responsible (correction: those who didn’t flee in time) were convicted for their crimes. To the best of my knowledge none of the defendants were tortured. Why? Because we wanted the world to see what a fair country we are and that even the world’s biggest criminals, woudl receive a fair trial. The reason being, that the credibility of our own country would be at stake if we conducted anything else but a fair trial.
What’s most probably going to happen if we execute these defendants is that they will turn into martyrs. In other words we will actually be turning them into heros beyond their death, rather showing the world the crimes they have committed, and putting them to prison for the rest of their lives.
There’s a real easy case to make here and it would be an approach we could take global. If I were in charge of these hearing I would do the following: In a trial, show how these terrorists have committed not only crimes against humanity, but also against their own faith – Islam. Bring famous Islamic scholars into the court room and have them give testimony on how these terrorists have nothing to do with Islam and how they will not to go to heaven and get whatever the magic number of virgins is. Instead, show in court that these defendants are just low lives, radicals, having nothing to do with religion and are bringing disgrace on the entire religion.
The unfortunate part here is of course that the Iraq occupation is in full swing and that muslims are being killed daily, making the whole justification for the war hard to explain – but it’s an idea.
I’m so sick of there being solid information against something and the government going into the opposite direction. We had stacks of report on the situation of Iraq before we started occupying that country – yet our “leaders” chose differently. Rumsfeld and other leaders of the ignorance-pack thought they knew better. An arrogance rarely shown as openly as in this time period of “fiscal conservatism.
This article was written by Alex - Author's Website
