| | Summer,
Surely you have better things to do than read all that left-wing PBS stuff. I was watching "Frontline" because nothing better was on. Before drifting off to sleep, there were a couple of things that stuck with me, like Rumsfeld & Bush changing the policy to make it more vague, and the FBI reluctant to get involved in Gitmo. They obviously wanted, as was literally said in some memo, "the gloves to come off". They wanted (wink-wink nudge-nudge) what they got.
Anyways, even if the duress was limited to their literal description, if a foreign enemy kept our P.O.W.'s or arrested citizens -
1. Up for days at a time
2. Subjected them to environmental extremes
3. Stripped them, humiliated them and let dogs threaten them
4. Solitary confinement, incommunicado,
5. Did this repeatedly over weeks and months
We would surely call it torture and make a big deal out of it. Communists used similar techniques to break people, making them confess of whatever crimes.
If we don't want Americans treated this way, we can't do it to others. You may say "we're the good guys - our ends justify our means". Everyone think's they're the "good guys", which is why violence, as a policy, can't be tolerated. You could as easily say since we're the "good guys", whatever force we choose is sanctioned. We need to keep the moral high-ground.
What's worse, once this becomes policy, it will no doubt creep into our own legal system, as Adam's described. When those soldiers come home, and go into law enforcement, they will apply what they've learned. And once the state has set the example, and tortured enough people, you can look forward to living in a much more brutal culture. Public executions and flogging's don't reduce crime (criminals never plan on getting caught) but it does make people blood-thirsty.
Scott
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