Mumbai Terrorist Attacks

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  1. #271

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    Quote Originally Posted by PDLM:
    Rubbish. From Protocol I of 1977:

    "Article 42 - Occupants of aircraft

    1. No person parachuting from an aircraft in distress shall be made the object of attack during his descent.

    2. Upon reaching the ground in territory controlled by an adverse Party, a person who has parachuted from an aircraft in distress shall be given an opportunity to surrender before being made the object of attack, unless it is apparent that he is engaging in a hostile act.

    3. Airborne troops are not protected by this Article."
    great, so now u have a situation that:

    a. u have to verify that the person that parachuted down was from a distress aircraft

    b. u really need to ask them to 'yield' before you can attack them..


    tell me on the field how useful is this when u are on a hostile field.

    and I stand corrected on the application of this clause on airborne combating troops..

  2. #272

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    freeier you might be an expert in Capital Market, but clearly debating on terrorism isn't your forte....

    Back to the SUBJECT....effectiveness of Torture, we do not really care how you handle a parachutist...


  3. #273

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    agree i am not the best person, but short of someone with real war experience whatever that is said here is armchair at best..

    get someone that has fought in a real war and they will tell you what is real life versus what we are talking about in our sitting room. and I am not even talking about people who are emotional because they know of friends or relatives being killed in the crossfires...


    and btw, I am not advocating that torture is the right solution.
    but the question I have been asking is, what THEN is the right solution.

    yes, elimination of poverty and education are the best solution, but are they going to work in the current context ?


    most of the people here seems to talk like god. they know 'when are people telling lies or telling truth', they can tell 'what are the right information from informants versus the fake and wrong information', they can afford to give people the benefit of the doubt when someone else provide info that this suspect is a terrorist, etc.etc...

    trust me, go to a real war, even in just info-comm warfare, the amount of information coming in would be so huge there are just no way for someone to easily identify what's right and what's wrong.

    that's what I kept telling you, in real life, when you are there looking at the information, needing to make real time decision, everything would be so different!

    Last edited by freeier; 01-12-2008 at 11:00 PM.

  4. #274

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    Freeier you have gone off on a completely irrelevant tangent. We are not talking about what happens in warfare - we are talking about how you handle terrorists.
    No one has contradicted your points about what happens when soldiers are in the middle of a battle - but it's just not relevant.


  5. #275

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    As Hull as just said, you have missed the point. Torturing POW / suspected terrorists does not occur 'in the heat of battle' it is calculated.


  6. #276

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    Quote Originally Posted by freeier:
    a. u have to verify that the person that parachuted down was from a distress aircraft
    Mmm geez, it must be tough to see an airplane spiraling out of the sky or blowing up in smoke as opposed to commandos holding weapons at the ready and of course the blinding speed at which parachutes drop would leave you no time to think...

    Laws and rules are not written so that you can nitpick and find every tiny exceptions where it might be OK to circumvent the rules. That's why there are tribunals and hearings. When rules are broken, people have to account for their actions to see whether it was reasonable to do so at the time. Police shootings are a perfect examples of that...every discharge of a firearm must be accounted for and that's the way it should be even though it may be difficult for the individual to make decision in a split second. The alternative is trigger happy people shooting at anything that moves...

    Obviuously many atrocities and excesses happen in times of war due to great stress being applied to individuals involved, it doesn't mean they have to be completely excused and that we should not have any rules at all.

  7. #277

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    Ok Hull and DanielandHayley have put it in a nicer way than I have ;-)


  8. #278

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    Quote Originally Posted by gilleshk:
    Mmm geez, it must be tough to see an airplane spiraling out of the sky or blowing up in smoke as opposed to commandos holding weapons at the ready and of course the blinding speed at which parachutes drop would leave you no time to think...

    Laws and rules are not written so that you can nitpick and find every tiny exceptions where it might be OK to circumvent the rules. That's why there are tribunals and hearings. When rules are broken, people have to account for their actions to see whether it was reasonable to do so at the time. Police shootings are a perfect examples of that...every discharge of a firearm must be accounted for and that's the way it should be even though it may be difficult for the individual to make decision in a split second. The alternative is trigger happy people shooting at anything that moves...

    Obviuously many atrocities and excesses happen in times of war due to great stress being applied to individuals involved, it doesn't mean they have to be completely excused and that we should not have any rules at all.
    Spot on...

  9. #279
    fm7
    Quote Originally Posted by freeier:
    aren't you arguing something that's precisely a double edged sword..

    1. if all the experts are so right, why did torturing exist till today ? obviously it does have proven effectiveness for it to persist ? i.e. a reason for them to exist.

    2. things that we have seen, things that we have heard, are just very minor parts of what exactly exist in this world.. i.e. there are alot more unknown unknowns that we can never think of.

    3. so tell me then, a confession letter would work with the suspected terrorists ?
    I'm not sure whether to reply, because it seems you might not have read my previous post carefully. Or maybe I didn't explain myself every well.

    "all the experts are so right" is not the same as what I said, "so many experts question." Moreover, my suggestion was that torture persists for reasons other than its effectiveness. Even if torture did work, which is open to question, it's pretty clear that a vast number of cases of it are for reasons other than just extraction of urgent information. That's a big part of the problem.

    As for the issue of unknown unknowns - well no-one has a perfect theology, or God's eye perspective on reality. The way we reason as a society is by building up a composite picture based on our shared experiences and our reading of history. That's why matters that people in lived in harder times than those chose in so many numbers to turn their backs on torture.

    I'm not sure it achieves much, in a conversation, to start firing off at people's epistemic limitations. Just because someone has not been to war doesn't mean they have no basis to form an opinion. They may know people who have, they have read extensively biographies and accounts of those who have and they have familiarised themselves with the history.

    Not everyone is an amplifier for the current media talking points.

  10. #280

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    I agree with Freeier on pretty much everything he says.

    DanielandHayley, to say that torture doesn't happen in the 'heart of battle' is to state a falsehood. A gun fight might not be literally waging outside the door but if a terrorist threat has been uncovered time is of the essence and whatever has to be done should be done and immediately. To me there is little difference (if any) between warfare and working to combat terrorism. Terrorism is an ongoing war against a country/countries/people etc.

    It's actually as simple as Freeier and others have said before- if torture didn't work it wouldn't be used.


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