Obama’s Torture Dilemma

There is a BIG difference between burning someone with a cigarette and keeping them up all night with lights and loud music. There is a BIG difference between electocuting someone and making them wear womans panties on their head. If you want to know what REAL torture is ask John McCain (he had bamboo shoved under his fingernails) and was really tortured. THIS WAS NOT TORTURE!!! The military does this (sleep depravation, waterboarding etc) to it's own people in Survival school. Again, pistol whipping someone is torture. Scaring them with a dog is not. What if there was a nuclear device in NYC that was set to go off in 6 hours and we had the only person who knew exactly where it was in custody. Would you approve of torture to get the information or just talk harshly to him and let 10 million people die and destroy the financial capitol of the world? Think about that?

When the day comes--and it will at some time--that captured male American soldiers are waterboarded, sleep-derpived, forced to prance around naked in front of women or be forced to wear women's clothes, etc., let's all be sure to loudly proclaiim that: "We have no problem with our soldiers being treated like this, because it is not torture."

Is Obama legally vulnerable to impeachment if he does not pursue any violations of the torture law? This is a legal question only. I do not expect it to happen as I doubt Congress has that kind of courage.

They are slowly sawing off people's heads with machettes and we worry about torturing them to prevent future atrocities against us?? LIberals are totally clueless. Didn't they learn anything about appeasement from WW 2? What part about Hamas and Hezbollah saying that Israel has NO right to exist to they not understand? What part about Islamic terrorists wanting to kill ALL infidels (which are all non-Muslims) don't they understand? it's too bad that history is apparently not taught in the schools anymore.

"Crawford's willingness to publicly use the word "torture" could have immediate legal implications. Torture is not just a violation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions; it is also a federal crime prosecutable by the Justice Department."

I keep hearing references to "the Geneva Conventions" applied to Gitmo prisners, but there's one glaring problem with that, the Geneva conventions don't apply to terror suspects. Under the third convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war (art. 4, 1949) a prisoner of war as pertaining to non-regular military militias is defied as follows;

Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions:[
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

These detainees not only fail to meet all of the criteria, they fail to meet any of the criteria. As far as the Geneva conventions are concerned they can be taken out back and shot. The conventions were designed for the protection of soldiers, medics, journalists, etc., not terrorists. When the conventions were held soldiers were typically conscripts pressed into service by their countries. If a Moroccan makes his own way to Afghanistan and gets caught trying to drive a car loaded with explosives into a crowded market to kill as many innocent civilians as possible, he is in no sense of the word a soldier and has no protection from the Geneva conventions. (Although US Federal laws may be applicable.)

nobody cares how bad some of these people (prisoners) were, they would shoot femails in there country for just having comitted the crime of being raped unwillingly! i really don't think anything we did to them should be punished! they almost all have the same mentality. i am sure that there is nothing we can do to change the mentality of these people. being an inocent women would you rather be raped and then shot, or be sleep deprived with a braw on your head with guard dogs barking at you. pleeeease get real!

Personally I would make a distinction between harsh interrogation techniques and "torture". IMO torture is something that's capable of causing serious harm either physically or mentally. Many techniques involve a gray area between the two. For instance sleep deprivation. If you keep a prisoner up all night with loud music does that constitute torture. I don't think so. If however you keep him up for two weeks straight, that can cause lasting harm to his mental health and is IMO torture. Such simple things as water dripping on your forehead can constitute torture. Is a slap in the face torture? A punch? Hitting the subject with a baseball bat? Waterboarding is a perfect example of what I see as a gray area. It doesn't seem to place the subject at risk of any mental or physical damage, it just is so scary that a few seconds of it will make the most dedicated men crack.

Thankfully it's not my decision as to what is or isn't torture, but considering the character of these detainees, I would not take all forms of harsh treatment off the table. I agree that torture is wrong, the only question is what is torture? Creating a witch hunt bent on the prosecution of a few well meaning but overzealous interrogators will only divide and weaken the country and place our citizens at risk.

The countries that some of these detainees come from do not want them back (for obvious reasons) so what do we do with them? No other counrty wants them....I know, give them visa's and set them free in the US so they can plot against us in our own country and get our welfare and entitlements and foodstamps and section housing and health care and.........mark my words some will be released into the US and will do terrorist activites. Who will be responsible for that? Obama? Biden? Pelosi? Holder? If you read the longterm goals of Al qieda (remember Bin Laden went to Oxford and wrote a extensive business plan for his organization with 5, 10, 20 and 50 year goals) you will see that their holy grail is to explode a nuclear device in a major US city. What then bleeding heart? What when they destroy a second city and then a third? The rules all went out the window on 9/11. This is a holy war between Islam and the infidels (which is basically the rest of the world)

It scares me to think of how many people are justifying our use of torture and other atrocities by saying that the victims *might* be bad people. It amazes me to think of how many so called "real" Americans believe that strong values and morals are to be considered only when dealing with people we "like" or agree with. Hypocrites.

I have a solution do a poll of where you stand on the Gitmo include your state and those who want Gitmo closed with the highest numbers thats the state where they will go! Problem Solved! WELCOME TO CALI DETAINEES! :)

This is the one thing that I will happy to see. To watch Obama sweat and swirm and twist lile a spineless pretzel trying to maker everyone happy with this prison thing. All of this and he has Gaza and Isreal to deal with. SORRY THAT THE WAR DIDNT END ON TIME FOR YA OBAMA. Did I forget the LEAGUE of IDIOTS that he is surrounding himself with. THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN!!!

For now, we can idealize about torture and proper behavior and doing the right thing and what America stands for. When Islamic fanatics have nuclear weapons the struggle will be for our very existence. Would you torture someone who could reveal the location of a nuclear device?

Let's see... American's humiliating Islamics is torture. Islamics lopping off heads for video tape use, well that's just dandy. I guess we should change tactics and start using a guillotine to persuade prisoners. Who could object

I personally find videoed beheadings of Americans much more defineable of torture than what has been discribed as such in the incident with KNOWN terrorist Qahtani. These men pride themselves on suicide missions. The "torture" is more a humiliation for not dying for the cause than what was done to them in captivity. The torture seems more like what is done to newbies pledging sororities than terrorists planning and completing attacks on the United States in 9/11. The Geneva Convention only works when all players comply with the terms, it can not be a one sided agreement.