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2004-05-15 Home Front: WoT

Use of Torture Might Exclude Evidence from Future Trials

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Posted by Mike Sylwester 2004-05-15 9:39:34 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Phil Carter: Itâs plausible that skilled interrogation by the FBI, in accordance with American law, could have produced valuable evidence of these terroristsâ guilt, which could have been used in court. But now that torture has been used, that may just be wishful hindsight.

Phil Carter is right, and that is exactly the point of putting these terrorists before military courts. The problem at hand is that the people in question are terrorists, not ordinary criminals. The operations undertaken to capture them are of a military, not civilian nature. The entire reason that risks are being taken to capture instead of kill them is to obtain actionable information for stopping or killing the perpetrators of other terrorist plotters. The thought of civilian trials does not enter into it. As unlawful combatants, terrorists ought to, ideally, be summarily executed once interrogations are over. This is what the US did with captured Germans in American uniform during the Battle of the Bulge, when no American civilians back in the continental US were under threat. There is no reason to keep these people alive once they have outlived their usefulness.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-05-15 9:52:59 AM|| 2004-05-15 9:52:59 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Kindly take note of the leftward pedigree of the source of this news article.

This is a release of information to coincide with all the news about Abu Ghraib. Its release is clearly timed to induce confusion over the detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere: an attempt to cloud the public mind over issues that have little to do with the war,

Liberals are work since 2001: Trying to enable more terrorist attacks. They can't send money, but they can sure muddy up the waters with news articles like this.

Posted by badanov 2004-05-15 10:04:31 AM|| [http://www.rkka.org] 2004-05-15 10:04:31 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 By using torture to question the top terrorists it has in custody, the government has effectively sabotaged any future prosecutions of al-Qaida players â major and minor â that might depend on evidence gathered through those interrogations.

Guess, we'll just have to kill them then.
Yes, yes. I woke up this morning and thought about how concerned I should be about the legal rights of foreign terrorists? My conclusion... not very.

Posted by tu3031 2004-05-15 10:47:08 AM|| 2004-05-15 10:47:08 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Hmmm... no mention of the fact that terrorists, as unlawful combatants, are not entitled to a trial at all. We don't have to submit them to a court; we can shoot them out of hand, or drop them into a vat of hot pig fat -- perfectly legally.

I guess the left has a problem with the idea that people who have placed themselves outside the rule of law are not entitled to the protection of the rule of law.

Posted by Robert Crawford 2004-05-15 11:20:20 AM|| [http://www.kloognome.com/] 2004-05-15 11:20:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#5
#1: There is no reason to keep these people alive once they have outlived their usefulness.
#3: Guess, we'll just have to kill them then.
#4: Terrorists, as unlawful combatants, are not entitled to a trial at all. We don't have to submit them to a court; we can shoot them out of hand.

First we conduct a military tribunal and then we execute them. That's what we should do selectively and thoughfully.

What we instead allowed to develop out of control was a frenzied routine of tormenting anybody and everybody brought to the prison. The decisions were made by the military policemen on the midnight shift and by junior interrogators fresh out of language school. It was a mindless conveyor belt, and promotions would be earned by increasing the sytem's "productivity," measured by numbers of reports, no matter how short, unreliable, false, useless and misleading.

Someone would be arrested in his home, hauled to the jail, and right away some guard or interrogator who knew nothing at all about him or about the circumstances of his arrest would routinely start "softening him up."
.
.

Posted by Mike Sylwester 2004-05-15 11:48:53 AM|| 2004-05-15 11:48:53 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 I agree that it is time to start institutionalizing the practice of shooting terrorist suspects who are trying to escape - after we have extarcted any useful information from them.

'Tis better to act now, and later ask for forgiveness, than to wait for permission.

Posted by Lone Ranger 2004-05-15 7:24:31 PM|| 2004-05-15 7:24:31 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Phil Carter is right, and that is exactly the point of putting these terrorists before military courts.

There's a problem here though: Carter calls the interrogation methods torture, but are they really? Has any U.S. legal body yet determined that prisoners were indeed "tortured"? Gen. Pace says that Geneva Conventions were violated, so does that mean that any violation of the Geneva Convention can be considered to be torture?

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-05-15 7:57:06 PM|| 2004-05-15 7:57:06 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 So what are terrorists?

Criminals? Then they should be handled by the civil courts with all the safeguards that implies.

Militants? then they are POWs and we end up with military courts and Geneva convention restrictions which were aimed at making war "civilized".

Obviously, neither approach applies to this new thing under the sun. Personally I think we should bring back an old Northern European tradition, outlawry. To be named an outlaw didn't mean you operated beyond the limits of the law, it meant you were beyond the protections of the law. And so it should be with these mokes. They recognize no civilized law (Islamic law? I said civilized.), so they are free from its restrictions and protections. Open season, shoot 'em, hang 'em, beat the hell out of them for info. Makes no difference, there's no weregild.

Posted by Mercutio 2004-05-15 10:42:15 PM|| 2004-05-15 10:42:15 PM|| Front Page Top

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