What I think is really interesting in this whole discussion on terrorism, etc....is that no one has asked the most basic question......
"Whom does it all benefit?"
In a completely unrelated question..."Anyone know why oil is suddenly at $50 bucks a barrel?"
Another exemplary display of your ignorance aussiegal. The excuse given by freeier et al is that trivial matters such as the Geneva convention and international law in general do not come in to the minds of soldiers during the 'heat of battle'. This is a notion that I can understand, an innocent women maybe shot dead because in the split second that the soldier had to decide if she was a suicide bomber or not, he or she got it wrong. This is the timescales we are are talking about, the torture of suspects/ pow's is not a split second decision. There is amble time for those in charge to consider their responsibilities.
When arguing a defence of 'self defence' against a criminal charge one of the tests is a 'cooling off period'...the solider faced with the approaching women carrying a 'parcel' may not have this luxury and has to act in an instance...the soldier with a room full of prisoners of war that takes part in torture/humiliation etc certainly has had the time to consider his or her actions.
ok since i was confusing, let me summarize what I am trying to say:
1. Geneva convention or not, on the ground soldiers are going to be too edgy to do anything. Try go into a tropical jungle and tell me if you can see a smoking plane that easily. If you are manning a post and you see a guy parachuting down 20m in front of you, are you going to sit and wait for him to land, shout 'yield, yield, yield' to him, knowing that he probably is holding a loaded machine gun?!
2. The key difficulty on information warfare (i.e. collection of intelligence) is the ability to validate information whether its true or false. Amount of information is just so large one needs to start screening them off 'systematically' before you get to the useful bits, and this screening off process is going to drop some useful information (e.g. warning that an attack is coming in mumbai?).
3. So similarly, torturing a prisoner or not, one will never know the full extent of the effect (i.e. good or bad) until days/months/years later. There is no way to verify the accuracy of information extracted. That said, its still information that might be valuable in the full context of scenarios.
4. Geneva convention (IIRC from that afternoon session 20 years ago) allows a soldier to refuse to talk to interrogator.
All in, I just do not see the effectiveness of the very 'nice to have' geneva convention to protect POW. And if you relate the terrorist as commandos (i.e. sneak attackers) that do not care about the safety of civilians in the area they are attacking, then obviously they do not expect to be treated like a soldier under the convention.
You can only adopt a convention if both sides agree to it. Any one breach and everyone else (soldiers at both sides) are going to be edgy and adopt a trigger happy attitude.
One of the best way of handling terrorist might be how Mossad is doing it. Assassination of the mastermind behind the terrorist activities. This is the exact treatment of the terrorist how they treat you. Sneak attack on them when they are least prepared. And of course, the armchair guys are going to say this is a violation of human rights to live...
Sure. Then the US have no basis for torturing Terrorists while branding the fact that they are doing it to get to him.
The case remain tho. Terrorism should not be more than a footnote in a newspaper. Talking so much about them is giving them way too much importance.
Who recalls (9/11 aside) most of the terrorist attacks a few months, let alone years after (family of the dead aside)?
Life restarted in Mumbai, business is going back as usual - and it should be the case.
on the one hand you said 'experts questioned' so it became 'pretty clear that a vast number of cases are for reasons other than...'...
and then you write off the implication that torturing existed for such long time obviously because there must have been results and there must have been other experts that believed torturing is useful ?
I don't think any of us here went thru the hardship and terror of fighting in a battlefield. So then lets let the soldiers do what they need to do instead of cuffing their hands and legs just because we on moral highground decides that it is humanely bad to the criminals to inflict them any pain...
You honestly think that is the line of questioning that really takes place? Or ever took place in Guantanamo? About Bin Laden?
Don't you see Mat....that is the point. Fear is the new religion And unlike the traditional route....everyone subscribes to it to a certain degree, no matter who you are or what you say.
As PDLM briefly mentioned a few post back....everyone just looks at the dolls and pays no attention to the puppet-masters.
All of you seems to think that a terrorist POW is someone that is captured in new york city, driven in a truck to the city prison and started the interrogation.
remember, most of these are happening in remote villages when they are captured. You want to extract as much information as you can from them without the luxury of moving them from one area to another. You do not want to have to transport them for fear of sneak attacks/rescues by their comrades.
The logistics preparation of any war/operation is incredible. Communication lines and systems are complex. We are not talking about soldiers and commanders using internet/blackberries to email one another. Communications are intercepted by both sides and each tries to interpret the other's messages to gain advantage in the battlefield.
Until anyone of us can visualize the complexity in a battlefield and the anxiety/uncertainty/edginess of the people involved, none of us are in the position to comment what is the best solution to take with regards to war and operations...
Funny, how people read what they want to read.
Who said we (the armchair people) want soldiers to stop/think/check the geneva convention handbook and then act?
Seems to me a lot of people are just turning around the pot but not providing any substantial information that TORTURE does work.