Does torture save lives?
| 10:23 UK time, Tuesday, 9 November 2010
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George Bush has kick started his by talking about torture. So in the words of the former president himself,
Amongst his many assertions in his new book Decision Points, Mr. Bush stands by the use of waterboarding as a interrogation technique saying in both the
He comes armed with his proof that detainees can become assets through the use of torture. Sep 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed is where after 'enduring the CIA's harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency's secret prisons, (he) stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials." '
There's a fine line between doing something legal and something that is intrinsically immoral . It's equally a question of regaining the dignity of the United States for .
I witness the physical, psychological and emotional consequences of torture every day at our torture treatment centers in Washington and Baltimore. Have you ever noticed the public outcry when an animal is abused? Imagine listening, as I have, to a torture survivor say to me that he wished he were an animal, because animals have rights in the United States. I pray that he did not hear Mr. Bush's flippant remark.
Waterboarding is torture, and torture is a violation of law.
But Mr. Bush would do it again if it meant saving lives.
David Danzig attempts to bring out the nuances in the debate.
'Challenging someone's credibility creates the possibility that he will tell you everything he knows. Waterboarding a suspect ensures that he will, at best, only tell you what he needs to in order to make the pain stop.'
Quoting Eric Maddox, the U.S. Army interrogator who spearheaded the hunt for Saddam Hussein, he continues,
"Water boarding? Give me a break!" Maddox told me. "Why would I do something to an individual where first of all they think they are going to die and second you don't follow through on the threat. I mean once you pull them up they are not dead, everything the interrogator does is a farce from then on....I am not trying to make the guy like me...But he has to believe me. If I tell him that I can make everything OK for him or his family, if he works with me, he has to take me at my word."
And Chris Selley believes we've reached a point where it's time to
'We simply think it's more important that benighted lands adhere to basic human rights principles than it is that Canada or the United States adhere to them, because we have mighty, wealthy democracies to protect at all costs, and they don't. Torture is different when we do it. Our child soldiers are different. That's just the way it is.'
What's clear is that George Bush is a . He has long said - but how do you view it? And how far should you go to get life-saving information?
