Torture, gay marriage

[mindstalk]

Torture
* Pressure mounts to investigate and prosecute Bush admin torture. McCain disagrees: "Look, in banana republics they prosecute people for actions they didn't agree with under previous administrations. To go back on a witch hunt that could last for a year or so, frankly, is going to be bad for the country, bad for future presidents," McCain said on CBS Right, because prosecution for illegal torture is politicising things.
* FBI agent speaks out about torture and it's ineffectiveness. Says the FBI refused to torture, creating a wall between the CIA and FBI, inhibiting cooperation on terror investigation. Also claims that it was contractors more than long-term CIA officials pushing for torture. (Plus, of course, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.)

Gay marriage
* 53% of New Yorkers polled support gay marriage
* New Jersey, too 49-43.
* Connecticut's governor signed a gay marriage bill, putting into law what the supreme court had decreed.

Misc
* Rise in housecalls. Article also mentions that they save the system money -- but the particular hospital loses ER fees. Reminds me of Krugman's point about how the US system inhibits preventive care. Insurance company paying for prevention now may save money for some other insurance company or Medicare, so why do it?
* Geocities closing. If there's content you want, go download it.

Comments

[lyceum-arabica.livejournal.com]

I'm with McCain and Obama on this one.... Prosecuting people in our defense organizations for doing what we told them was their duty would have to have long-lasting side effects, and it seems like most of the people in support of prosecution aren't providing a good analysis of how they'd handle those problems.

Sure, I'd like to see the person who set the original orders charged with something, violating international treaties... but not people farther down the chain. Especially when you consider that we already torture all our own soldiers using the same techniques before we let them go into combat (my friend's husband had to go through 'torture camp' this past winter) so applying those strategies to our enemies might not have seemed that drastic, and when you consider that soldiers are regularly asked to commit murder when they fight (even of completely innocent people, if they're in the wrong place at the wrong time or don't make their intentions clear enough).

I just think that if we start holding defense personnel responsible for policing their commanders, and for making independent decisions about which of their commands are legal to follow... that's going to cause problems.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that we tell troops precisely that they are not to follow illegal orders. Post-Nuremberg regime and all that.

Not sure what you mean by "torture camp"; I doubt we waterboard troops, unless it's precisely to try to train them to resist possible torture.

FWIW, Abu Ghraib aside, I'm not sure how many regular soldiers were involved in all this, via CIA agents and contractors. (I really don't know.)

Agreed that it'd be most productive to go after the people giving the orders. Lower levesl, dunno; maybe discharge them, as a punishment short of prison?

[lyceum-arabica.livejournal.com]

we do waterboard our own soldiers... as prep to withstand torture themselves, yes. In fact, pretty much all the abuse/torture stuff was tried out on our people first: http://www.slate.com/id/2210059/

my point about soldiers was that we expect people to unquestioningly follow orders that would be illegal at home (like killing people), and we do it all the time. i don't think we can place the responsibility of keeping track of whose legal is legal in which context on the individual defense employees. One of the nastier but still important points of the military is that for the whole system to run safely, we really need to the individuals to act pretty deterministically... i worry when we start to punish people for following orders, unless it is obvious that the orders are absurd and evil.

And that wasn't the case here. There were legal and philosophical arguments supporting what was done. They might not have been *good* arguments, and it is certainly much better that we've stopped following them. But I don't think we can hold regular defense employees responsible for correctly deciding questions which lawyers, politicians, and social philosophers are still arguing over.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, and I just read http://hnn.us/articles/5378.html on the difficulty of acting against illegal orders.

Be interesting to see comments from mlc23 and slow_war, if the latter can in public.

[mlc23.livejournal.com]

The "torture camp" in question is SERE school which basically teaches military how to be prisoners of war. It's fairly secretive, but there are a lot of articles about it if you want to google.

That said, I'm not sure that undergoing waterboarding or other "torture" in a controlled training environment where you know there are limits is exactly the same as having it done to you as an enemy/POW. My husband went through SERE and although I don't know the details, we've had this sort of philosophical discussion about it.

Like you I have no idea how many regular soldiers were involved. Mostly what I've heard about is the CIA program and it was, in fact, very controlled. Unlike most liberals, I believe torture can work, and is maybe, possibly, ok to use in an extremely limited number of circumstances (with a bazillion caveats).

Military personnel have a legal and moral obligation to refuse unlawful orders. Period. But... in reality not everything falls into clear cut categories, not every service member is educated enough to know where the boundaries are, and yeah, the person giving the orders is probably more culpable. However, I don't think absurd and evil (as mentioned below) is a good enough standard by a long shot. For example - being ordered to steal equipment, fake gear accounting statements, etc. can probably be "justified" under the right circumstances and are not really evil in the sense that murder and rape are evil, but I would expect anyone following such an illegal order to be duly punished (along with the person giving the order).

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

not sure... is exactly the same

Especially if the interrogators go beyond the guidelines that students would stay within.

very controlled

Not sure what you mean by that.

I can see the logic of "torture to make them talk, check what they say thoroughly". One thought is about the ease of controlling the sort of people who'd volunteer for torture work, or the effects of doing it on non-sadists drafted into it.

A bigger thought is that the initial premise assumes the victim actually knows something. But if they don't, you end up keeping on torturing them, going through the stuff they make up, waiting for the true information they don't have to give.

[mlc23.livejournal.com]

I just mean it sounds like it was well thought out and not some sort of sadistic free-for-all. I found this NY Times article quite interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/washington/22ksm.html?ex=1371873600&en=ebb954dc91ad910e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it was a mix. "ad hoc", "cobbled together", "little research or reflection"... along with approval of each step, having a medic on hand, etc.