Canada puts U.S. on torture watch list
Omar Khadr’s lawyers say they can’t understand why Canada is not doing more to help their client in light of new evidence that Ottawa has put the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on a watch list for torture.
Khadr — a Canadian citizen who was just 15-years-old when he was captured in Afghanistan more than five years ago and taken to Guantanamo — has claimed that he has been tortured at the prison. Now, CTV News has obtained documents that put Guantanamo Bay on a torture watch list.
Khadr’s U.S. military lawyer says the new documents contradict Harper’s assurances that his client is receiving fair treatment.
Take THAT Bush
The death spiral of our reputation and principles continues unabated.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls … it tolls for thee.
Who would Jesus waterboard? Besides the current crop of leaders, I mean?
Good Grief. Can we close Gitmo already? I’m geting sick of the whining. Perhaps Canada can take all of the prisoners for us? Maybe they can figure out what to do with them. Even better, turn them over the the UN.
So, what was this 15 year old Canadian doing in Afghanistan?
From the article:
> It notes specific “U.S. interrogation
> techniquies,” which
> include “forced nudity, isolation, and
> sleep deprivation.”
The problem is that no one considers those techniques torture. I don’t mean “no one” as “no one in the US”. I mean “no one” as in every country on the planet uses these techniques in their prisons.
Trying to train people to “recognize” if someone has been tortured simply means that soldiers will be trained to use those signs to look tortured in order to gain sympathy from idiots.
6,
“Others do it” is such an excellent argument for shameful behavior, isn’t it?
The kid was picked up from a local warlord for a bounty offered by the US military, as were many other innocents interred there. The problem is that since they don’t exist as humans to us, we aren’t even interested in investigating his innocence. Jefferson weeps.
Sleep deprivation is torture by any definition. So is waterboarding or any suffocation torture.
It’s that such tactics (including waterboarding) are always lumped in together with nudity and isolation. The inclusion of acts we consider trivial turns our mind off to the atrocities linked with them in the issue by clever interlocutors.
Open your eyes.
BTW,
That is one of the stupidest things I have ever read.
#7 – There is far less SmartAlex around here than there should be… I know you are busy with the new gig, but try to carve out a few extra minutes to post a little more 🙂
It took 40 years to Canadians realize that Americans torture or incentive torture around the world? Ask any Latin American and they will remember the infamous “School of America”, a nice place where Latin Americans soldiers learned how to use torture.
#7
Sleep deprivation is not torture by anyone’s definition other than your own. If you think it is, then you are also saying that anytime someone has kept you from sleeping that they have “tortured” you. Nonsense. Police departments around the world use sleep deprivation to some degree to interrogate prisoners. To equate discomfort with torture is to cheapen the meaning of torture.
Waterboarding is not at all in the same category as sleep deprivation because it *is* questioned by many to be torture and as such is not widely used. There is a real debate as to whether waterboarding is torture whereas there is none with sleep deprivation.
RE: “Recognizing” torture
Clearly, you are naive. Obviously if someone is being beaten they are going to show marks from such and no “training” is required. But say someone has been through four days of waterboarding, what “signs” are you going to look for? Furthermore, if a prisoner knew that outsider observers were looking for particular behavior to indicate torture would they not try to mimic that behavior to gain favor with people in the hopes that they might try to effect their release?
Canada has been guilty of torture for years. I for one don’t care what they say until they take Celine Dion back. Her CDs are akin to bamboo under the fingernails.
But if you gave every prisoner a choice: wear a jumpsuit made out of ham or go nude – would that be torture?
I think there should be some real simple guidelines for torture. The easiest I can think of is the following:
1. Have the person doubting is something is torture take a dump.
2. Apply said questionable torture method to said person.
3. Tell them if they take eat their own poop, the questionable torture will be stopped.
(Repeat 10 times or as needed).
If person does not eat their own poop, then it’s not torture. If they do, it’s torture.
Think every single one of us here would opt to eat their own poo in both sleep AND waterboarding cases.
Just remember, the sleep deprevation we’re talking here isn’t taking wakeup pills for an exam. Or staying awake 48 straight in Vegas. This is going way beyond seeing the A & W Rootbeer Bear on the horizon in basic training watching a post. Thats a walk in the park.
This, is far, far more serious and long term.
Let’s see, forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation. Sounds like the average hospital stay to me.
None the less, it is quite obvious from other reasons that the USA should be on torture watch lists. The UK, too.
(I’m an American, just FYI.)
#10 – To equate discomfort with torture is to cheapen the meaning of torture.
And to equate sleep deprivation with mere discomfort is equally disingenuous.
It makes it sound like we’re asking him to wear a shirt that was washed without fabric softener.
I’m not saying that I think sleep deprivation is a war crime or anything, but only that the language you’ve chosen seriously downplays the actual physical effect of deprivation.
#12 – But if you gave every prisoner a choice: wear a jumpsuit made out of ham or go nude – would that be torture?
No… But it would be a Monty Python sketch.
#13 – Okay… That upset me so much that I feel compelled to comment on the fact that I don’t want to comment on that… (insert shocked and confused smile emoticon here)
#13 – Some people like to eat poop. If I weren’t at work I’d find a couple of websites and post links to gross everyone out.
#16: Exactly. Don’t forget the ‘2 Girls, 1 Cup’ video.
#16 – #13 – Some people like to eat poop. If I weren’t at work I’d find a couple of websites and post links to gross everyone out.
And if you did, I’d figure out your home address, hire a guide and a dogsled team, trek across the vast wilderness to your charred yet snowcapped chunk of Earth, set up camp, rest, enjoy a hearty breakfast, make small talk with your wife, admire your oversized SUV which runs off the souls of kittens, then I’d beat the crap out of you, then I’d raid your icebox, break camp, and return to civilization with my icebox spoils.
canada who?
#18 – It sooo temping to come back to this thread when I get home tonight. Fer not though, I won’t. (I’ll save those links for a Hillary thread.)
All the good will for the USA after 911 has gone out the window. Way to go Dummy U !!!
Smartalix.
I second the idea that your reasoned and intelligent comments have been most missed lately. Please visit more often.
#20 – #18 – It sooo temping to come back to this thread when I get home tonight. Fer not though, I won’t. (I’ll save those links for a Hillary thread.)
There’ll be a real shitstorm if you do… 🙂
#22 – You could supplement your income if you could get sponsorship from like Oxford or Webster’s. You could have a jacket with the OED logo on it. You’d be like a librarian race car driver.
There’s no apostrophe in it’s as used in your title.
BY JOVE! THE NUDE BIRD IS RIGHT!
Good, I say, good show there Parrot!
Lack of reasonable comments indeed. If sleep deprivation is consider “excruciating” mental pain and thus torture then almost anything can be considered torture. I find Britney Spear’s cackling and Mr. Catshit for Brains comments to cause “excruciating” mental pain. Does that mean we ban their use internationally? If I’m a prisoner, can I simply state that asking me any question I do not want to answer causes excruciating mental pain and thus is torture or using #13’s barometer, can I simply say that I would rather eat feces than answer questions?
Staying up an entire night playing computer games or out partying could hardly be considered torture. However waking up someone with bright lights every time they try to go to sleep for an entire weeks is entirely beyond that. I know that after 2-3 days of little sleep I start becoming unbalanced and prone to agitation. Can you imagine not sleeping for an entire week? How mentally and physically wrecked you would be? Now imagine that is continued for 2 weeks. I don’t think anyone of sound mind would find that to be a benign thing to do.
Captain Oveur:
JoeyHarper, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?#22==What is mental pain?
I was on the borderline about waterboarding until one expert described it as “actual drowning”, then I understood it as torture.
Lack of sleep is torture?
Well, like all techniques–I guess you have to experience it as mere words don’t convey the experience?
BUT HERES MY QUESTION–can torture be a thing that causes great anguish to one person and nothing at all to someone else? Think of eating dog poop, or being naked, or being raped?
I’m thinking of having your holy book shit on and flushed in a toilet. Boy, that would be a terrible think for some, and nothing for others. Is that torture?
Hey Catshit
It just occurred to me how similar this discussion could be to our capital punishment discussion with a nice distinction.
I think GOUSA should avoid torture because it degrades our culture. Not so with CP. Whats the difference? CP is imposed after due process. No such protection for torture.