FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS TORTURE
In the United Stated a continuing media campaign asserts that ‘friends don’t let friends drive drunk.’ The idea of friends holding one another accountable isn’t a bad one, so maybe it was with that in mind when Canada placed their nearest neighbors on a government list of countries that allow or promote terror, in this case through the use of torture.
The Foreign Affairs Department document lists the United States along with Israel, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Syria, as countries where prisoners are at risk of human rights abuses such as torture. The document, which formed part of a manual on torture awareness given to diplomats, was inadvertently released to Amnesty International lawyers as part of a court case against the Canadian government over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.
Responding the the news U.S. Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, said. “We find it to be offensive for us to be on the same list with countries like Iran and China. Quite frankly it’s absurd, for us to be on a list like that is just ridiculous.” Wilkins went on to say that the United States does not authorise or condone torture and that he had “very forcefully” requested that the U.S. be removed from the list at once. Israel was also unhappy with their inclusion on the Canadian list.
Canads’s foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, has since apologised for including the US and Israel on the list. Insisting the list was in no way part of any policy document and did not convey the official views of his government Bernier explained that the list “wrongly includes some of our closest allies.” He went on to say. “I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten.”
The United States has been repeatedly criticized for its continued detention and treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba where CIA operatives have used questionable interrogation techniques to obtain information and confessions from prisoners.
Interrogation methods employed by the CIA have controversially included simulated drowning, (known as waterboarding), mock executions, stress positions, sleep depravation, forced nudity, and among other things, continued exposure to Eminem’s “Slim Shady” album. However, President Bush himself has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. do not torture prisoners.
While Canada has apologised for including the U.S. and Israel on the list I’m wondering if there wasn’t at least a little bit of deliberate engineering behind its release. Canada is, of course, a friend and ally of the U.S., and as such maybe a decision was made to diplomatically lean on their neighbors in the hope of bringing a little accountability to the relationship. After all, if friends don’t let friends drive drunk, then surely the buck doesn’t just stop there?
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Canada places the US on terror state list
Canada says ‘Oops, sorry about that.’
Canada put the USA on terror nation list
U.S. interrogation techniques (Also see another list)
Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Waterboarding and Torture
Wrote the following comment on Jan 23, 2008 at 6:40 pm
slim shaddey torture… hahah that’s just wrong- i didnt know about that one.
I guess if you’re too afraid to make a hard stand against a country, but want your opinion to be heard, what Canada did would be the best route to go.
I dont know though, I just dont trust governments and i have a hard time believing that any govt. wouldnt turn to torture in hard times or war times. Not saying my govt. hasnt jumped the gun on what other countries would do… just that I think its quite possibly a little hypocritical of Canada. Particularly when they’ve been suspect for subcontracting torture to other countries. They can’t do it but they can get other countries to do it.. is that really any different?
Wrote the following comment on Jan 23, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Simon,
As I’ve posted elswhere:
I don’t consider waterboarding torture .. it’s administered to every Armed Forces member that goes through SERE Training. SERE is Survival, Evasion, Resistance & Escape training and is a course for those in high possibility of enemy capture i.e. Special Forces, SEALS, Rangers, Force Recon etc.
They all get, at least:
Attention Grabs: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
Attention Slaps: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
Belly Slaps: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane or a towel is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
It’s coercive interrogation , not torture. … but every one of them breaks. No one is permanently damaged, no one’s mind is broken. Their will to resist is simply overwhelmed. If it’s been good enough for thousands of our servicemen, it’s good enough for our enemies.
In these things I find myself in agreement with men who are far better wordsmiths than I am so, rather than paraphrase one of them, take a look here:
https://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/400rhqav.asp
Wrote the following comment on Jan 23, 2008 at 9:20 pm
You’re in good company Brewster, it would seem that no other country would openly disagree with Americas insistence that these methods are torture.
I guess it’s a blurry moral line isn’t it. Like most moral lines I suppose. We would all love to think that moral lines are clear and straight, but that doesn’t ever seem to be the case.
Here’s the thing though, if these techniques aren’t torture, then why don’t authorities like the FBI and the cops use them on regular every day bad guys.
You see, if these techniques are fair, legal, humane, and effective then why in Gods name aren’t they being used in the every day fight against crime. Why are drug dealers and sex offenders being
torturedinterrogated like this?It seems to me that if these interrogation techniques are okay, then someone somewhere is guilty of a gross dereliction of their duty to bring this crime fighting technique to the forces that would benefit from them.
Wrote the following comment on Jan 24, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Did you even read the Krauthammer article I linked to?
We’re not talking about “regular everyday bad guys” are we?
Wrote the following comment on Jan 24, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Yes I did Brewster, it was an interesting article. I thought it was interesting in effectively calling the Iraq war legitimate, there would seem to be no shortage of evidence suggesting that to be false, but lets not dwell on that side issue.
The fact is while a uniform wearing enlisted solider should be treated fairly and humanely, I still believe that enemy POW’s (or enemy combatants as they are call at Gitmo so as to avoid a Geneva convention wrangle) should also be treated in the manner we would expect our captured servicemen and women to be. After all, these so called terrorists signed up not because they wanted to get funded through college, but because they believe on the whole that they are doing God’s great work. Yes, we find this appalling, but my point is that these prisoners are also enlisted.
The nuclear bomb in New York example was interesting and really who among us wouldn’t support the ‘by any means’ approach in that instance. But I suppose my question would be, how many of the people who were captured all those years ago in Afghanistan, are actually that well connected anymore. Surely after years in Gitmo they’re now severed from the information that the CIA would torture out of them?
No we’re not talking about “regular every day bad guys”, but neither are we talking about the bomb in New York city situation either.
Another problem is this: You’ve had a guy for 6 or 7 years now, and you’ve tortured him a bit from time to time, but he’s no good to you anymore because he is out of the loop of planners you’re trying to infiltrate. So what do you do with him now?
If there was an equivalent facility to guantanamo bay in Afghanistan run by the Taliban, where U.S. and British servicemen and women had been held for many years for their role in the attack on that country, how would you feel about that? Lets go one step further to, lets say that the Taliban assure us that the prisoners (who are granted no contact with family, friends, or lawyers) are being treated fairly, but they have thus far refused to allow foreign inspectors to go in and review that, would you be okay with this?
My point here is that it is a mess, and the reason I mentioned “regular everyday bad guys” is because in reality more Americans are dying because of drug related problems than terrorism, so heck, why not round up all the dealers and torture the shit out of them until they tell us what we want to know?
It’s a messy situation from start to finish. A moral conundrum that seems unanswerable to me. I wish we, as humans, were better at this stuff!