Torturing prisoners is both illegal and morally indefensible.  You so-called Christians crack me up.

Update:

CNN summarizes the latest Pew survey.

“The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.

People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it.”

Does this really surprise anyone?

It is a terrible world we live in (parts of it). I have a hard time feeling sorry for terrorists.

I have yet to see someone define torture for the discussion of interrogations.

how else do you find out if they are going to try and blow us up--play nice?

well if we need to find terrorist or stop an attack yes, for random stuff or on civilians no

It depends on the prisoner and the crime they are being held for.

If we torture, we become no better than our enemies.

not great, but is a significant political issure

Doesn't the terrorist people torture the POWs too? Why not do it to their own people as well?

I sure hate to think of what U.S. P.O.W.s went through for us.

I think when only under certian cercumstances

I have mixed feelings on this. On one side I see it as being a bad thing and on the other, Im not sure some of the people deserve it. I guess my problem is trying to decide who is who.

If these prisoners are guilty of terrorism, then they should go to prison for a long time. That being said, I don't think that torture is a valid means of interrogation. For one thing, many people will admit to just about anything to end the torture, regardless of if they are guilty. I want terrorists to be in jail, and I don't want any sort of loop hole to exist to make their sentencing invalid. In addition, what if some of them are innocent? Do we really want to be responsible for torturing innocent people? I say be strict, and come down hard, but be fair.

Americans do not care about the rights of terrorists...period. Extreme interrogation methods should be allowed.

Not only is torturing POW's morally wrong, it is also counterproductive most of the time. It's efficacy in the war against terrorism has been mixed, at best. The case of Ibn al-Sheyakh al Libi is illustrative. al Libi was an al-Qaeda trained terrorist who was incarcerated in Egypt. There he confessed to the local authorities that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda members how to use weapons of mass destruction. It turns out that this confession, which was forced in nature, was cited as a cause of war by the United States against Iraq. The lesson? Forced confessions don't work, and you must always collaborate information received from sessions with POW's with other available intelligence. Forcing out confessions only makes the POW's say what the interrogators want to hear. The goal is always to get accurate information, and that broadly is done best through a carrot-stick approach which is nowhere near as brutal.

It is hard for me to believe that some people equate sleep deprivation or being forced to sit in a cold room with holding Nick Berg down, hands and feet bound, while these barbaric pigs slowly saw his head off.

In my view, any state that resorts to torture embraces the very barbarity it claims to oppose.

That being said, I don't regard this as a particularly pressing political issue.

  i had a professor in college who asked the opinion of the class on this issue. the situation: the government had captured a woman who had intel on a plotted terrorist attack on a hospital.  if we got info from her, hundreds would be saved, if not thousands. do you toture her for information?

the class almost unanimously said yes. and the he added: "Okay, well it comes down to you to do the torturing. no one else will do it. if you torture her, you may or may not get info. if you don't, hundreds may die when you could have prevented it. now what?"

the vote was again nearly unanimous. this time, however, it was against torture.  if you're not willing to do the torturing, then how can you vote for someone else to do it in your stead? something to think about. and i do feel that this issue is of great importance.

these so called "people" getting tortured are terrorists they should be slowely tortured until dead

This is despicable and should never be tolerated by regular troops. I emphasize "regular" troops. If we are going to engage in counter-terrorism, then extraordinary methods are going to be used. It should be done in the same way as our secret warfare against the Soviet spy system worked.

Send in Jane Fonda to mollify the situation.She will make sure everyone is treated humanely like she did our POW's in Nam.Update:When is it ok? When more of our soldiers are dragged and paraded through the streets,as in Somalia?Or as LR said when our guys are hanging from bridges?Where are the rights of our men and of all the hostages that have been tortured and killed from many countries. The stuff needs to stop and if this is an avenue by which to help,so be it!These are not POW's these are terrorists we are talking about!

Our wrong headed fool in the Whitehouse has now decimated Habeus Corpus,and I feel even sorrier for our Armed Forces now.Now we've given an excuse to our Enemies to torture American POWS.Now we are no longer seen as civilized and reasonable in the face of War.We have sunk to a new low.For one thing 55% of the prisoners in Guantanomo Bay are NOT TERRORISTS,and are there on very flimsy "suspicion"...furthermore,it is well known that under Torture,prisoners have historically provided false information in the hopes of ending their agony.The information obtained by such barbarism is almost always USELESS.As are the current creeps running our country.

Interesting perspective on torture paraphrased from The Philosopher's Magazine:

While most people regard torture as evil, there are reasonable moral arguments in its favor. The most common argument is a utilitarian one: the harm prevented by gathering information by torture can outweigh the moral harms inflicted by the practice of torture.

If the evil of using torture is outweighed by its potential good consequences, then the matter of its effectiveness needs to be resolved. If torture is not an effective means of gaining reliable information, then there will be no good consequences to outweigh the evil of engaging in torture. If this is the case, then torture cannot be justified in this manner.

While there is significant debate over the general effectiveness of torture, most research concludes that it is not a particularly effective means of acquiring accurate information.

Given that torture is not effective as a means of gathering reliable information, the utilitarian argument in its favor must be rejected. This is because torturing people is not likely to yield any good consequences.

Despite its ineffectiveness as a means of extracting information directly, torture does seem to be an effective means towards another end, namely that of intimidation. History has shown that authoritarian societies successfully employed torture as a means of political control and as a means of creating informers. Ironically, while actual torture rarely yields reliable information, the culture of fear created by the threat of torture often motivates people to bring information to those in power.

Given its effectiveness as a tool of coercion and intimidation, torture and the threat of torture could be used as weapons against terror. If the threat of torture is both credible and terrible enough, then the likelihood of terrorist activity could be reduced and the number of useful informants could increase significantly.

While this argument has a certain appeal, it faces three problems. First, it seems likely that adopting torture and the threat of torture as weapons would be morally harmful to the society in question. To see that this is likely, one needs to merely consider the nature of societies that have already embraced the use of torture. Second, the use of torture as a means of coercion and intimidation certainly seems to be a form of terrorism. As such, the reduction in one type of terrorism would be, ironically, offset by the increase in another. Third, terrorism is denounced as a moral evil and its alleged opponents, such as George Bush, seem to revel in claiming the moral high ground. However, a society that accepts the use of torture cannot claim the moral high ground-they are walking the same ground as the terrorists. Thus, it would seem that the use of torture is not morally acceptable.

You would think that with all the scientific breakthroughs and technology we have today that we wouldnt have to resort to torture to get information from people. There must be something, like an injection, that makes people have to answer any question truthfully. Or would that defeat the purpose of some who like inflicting pain?

While I do not condone sanctioned torture, it's simply not a pressing issue. I reach this conclusion based on the following facts and reasonable opinions. First, the Islamic World is not really upset at the use of torture, as such violence is (or at least appears to be) a typical part of their accepted culture. Any protests are organized for geopolitical reasons, not for genuine outrage. Second, torture of foreigners in a foreign jurisdiction is not illegal (by U.S. law), as no law applies to sovereigns by definition. War is a conflict between sovereigns, and no law applies. Third, even under the Geneva Convention (in actuality a gentlemen's agreement) and historical international precedent, non-uniformed irregulars can be simply killed. The "rules" regarding prisoners of war do not apply. Fourth, any actual torture by Western forces and other agents appears thus far to be isolated instances. Finally, and most importantly, much of what has been reported as torture simply is not actual torture. Embarrassment and disrespect simply does not rise to the level of torture, not even close.

I personally believe that torture is OK in certain instances, but I really don't believe in it. Many of you have said something to the effect of, "why shouldn't we torture them, they'd do it to us". Just because they do it, doesn't mean its ok. I think maybe mental torture would be useful, but physical is just down right crude. Imagine if you were the one who was required to cut someones fingers off, one by one, and then get to the end to find out that they really know nothing. Its a huge risk to torture someone, obviously we think they have information, but we don't really know. I don't like gambling, especially with someone elses life.

torture... they are crimanals who know things that will help us win the war and the ones who have commited serious crimes should be killed because it is our tax money that keeps them in there... its the Liberal Pin heaads who think the are harmless individuals who have a life... that bulls**t!

i think we should torture, becuase come on, depending on the savagness of the enemy, they would do the same to us. just dont do the bamboo under the finger nails. that hurts just thinking about it.

I can't believe that Americans would stand for this. Torture is torture. You can't put a dress on this pig.

Clear conscience? Considering that these are not average Muslims, and they would cut my head off if they were given a chance just because of where I was born, I would say my conscience would be pretty damn clear. Some people seem to think torture is a new thing. It's been used for years and is absolutely nothing compared to some of the things our soldiers have gone through in the hands of the enemy.

Is the best way to win hearts and minds amongest the muslim community to toture people who belong to said community? I realise that we live in extraordinary times, and that perhaps we need to take extraordinary measures. Torture should not be one of these. I don't see how people can justify torture of terror suspects based on the idea that terrorists behead people they capture. If anything it only serves to lower us to their level. We make such wonderful, grandiose statements about freedom and how we want to help people and bring peace, but do we do this at the cost of our moral obligations? The very fact that these people could be considered POWs precludes the use of torture under the Geneva Convention. Or will we be so quick to abandon our humanity? As loathe as I myself am to say this, these people are human beings, like it or lump it people. As such they still have some basic rights. Wiseguy has just mentioned that Saddam, and others like him, have ripped up the geneva convention. Perhaps putting it into a vat of acid would be a little more precise. Would we become like Saddam? Because that is exactly what we are facing. It starts off with a little torture. Then who knows, maybe gas them as a warning to others. Burn them alive in massive furnaces, send them to concentration camps. No, this is worse than Saddam, this is Naziesque. Maybe I went a little far, but I'm a great fan of asking the question: where does it end? Thomas Paine once said, "An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." Remember Jean Charles de Menezes? Shot dead because they [police] "suspected" he was a terrorist. An innocent man is dead because we were so quick to jump to conclusions. This is exactly the kind of thing we can hope to expect if we allow torture. Because man is imperfect and capable of making mistakes. But some mistakes are not forgiveable. Sometimes 'sorry' is not enough. Will we establish that precendent that will cause us to live in more fear of our governments than of the real threat? You can say that I'm for coddling terrorists all you like I don't care, but in the end I'll have the cleaner conscience. Can you say the same?

If they had ever told me to torture somebody, I would have told them to kiss my ass.

Souljunkie, I can respect your take, that it's important to try to see things from a soldier's perspective when discussing morality in warfare. It's hard to do, but worthwhile. On the other hand, I couldn't disagree more when you say we can't, or shouldn't, expect rules of war to be enforced. One reason Saddam had to be taken out - one reason why we're over there in the first place - is because Saddam is a war criminal with a history of flaunting the rules -- including, just as one example, the rules governing the treatment of POW's. Is extraction of information more difficult when "stretching the rules" isn't an option? Of course. But that isn't justification on its own. Not to make light of what we're talking about, but simple analogies all draw on the same basic principle: It's harder to hit a baseball out of the park without 'the clear'; it's harder to earn a dollar than it is to steal one; the quickest and easiest way to get homework done on time is to copy someone else's. Its refusal to succumb to the easy, less honorable way of doing things is why the U.S. a good place to live. It's what makes decent people better than indecent ones - no "high horse" necessary. The U.S. and its treatment of POW's must be governed by rules, not by men. When the lines get blurred by emotion or power trips, ethics go out the window. This is why McCain's bill is so important, and why the government is right to intervene. I don't think I'm the only one who cringes when he hears about Iraqis, disguised as first aid workers, slaughtering unsuspecting (and, at times, unarmed) U.S. patrolmen. My stomach turns at the thought of using mosques the way real soldiers use trenches (now a common tactic among insurgents). I don't think we need to stoop to their level to beat them.

Torture isn't justified, and it scares me to know how quickly the military was able to stick US citizens in a military prison. Almost as scary as how the vocal fringe groups are supporting the torture!

I don't think any decent, right thinking American condones or applauds the torturing of POW's under any circumstances. This is not an easy thing to rate one way or the other. I think Goneaway makes a very good point. We don't have all the facts, and can we trust the media to tell us the truth? Well it's already been proven that the media has been less than ethical lately, less than honest. What I do know is the the U.S. has become a target for terrorist and they have to be stopped. Do the ends justify the means? I don't know, I'm certainly not qualified to answer that. I know that as a decent human being I can't accept torture, but as an American I know that we have to protect ourselves, sometimes at any cost. Therein lies the quandary, the catch 22. What I do think is unfair, is for one side of this debate or the other to believe their's is the American way. All American's want this war to end. All parents of young people in the service want their children to come home....alive. I think everyone wants this to end in a way that reflects our best interest. Until people can agree to disagree and respect other peoples views, we will never find a solution. At least that is the opinion of this humble American.

This list was brought to my attention and I was glad. This is good stuff Im reading here. Magellan, I think most Americans don't want to hear about us being the 'bad guy' and it always seems that way when you hear that we tortured somebody or people die at our hands. Ofcourse the liberal media is not anywhere close to being fair minded especially The New york Times so I basically will discount their opinion completely. The reality of things is that civilians dont ever get to see things from the soldiers perspective. Its easy for us to point our fingers and say we cant do that when your not the ones in the middle of the blood and chaos. Consider if it was your buddy next to you that was shot by insurgents or killed by a car bomb, it might a little easier to see how it could be easy to 'stretch the rules' where getting information could save the lives of the people you are sleeping with that night. If it were your child being abducted would you torture a person when you had reliable intelligence that indicated the prisoner could help find them? I know I would and would not loose sleep for a minute. Im not going to go into the rules of the Genevea convention and all that crap but I know that it is a farce to really believe humans can enforce rules of war during a war. Its just silly. War is war, not a game with rules. If it will save 100 American lives I really dont care how our military gets its information. Particularly here where I know the enemy is not going to think twice about torturing us. Weve seen it on video like a slap in the face. If your looking for some one to feel sorry for the enemy under these circumstances your barking up the wrong tree here. Forget the media and just ask yourself: What would I be capable of doing if I had to save the lives of my own family from these people. If we are honest with ourselves, we will probably get off this oh we are Americans and we cant do that because were just more civilized ... high horse and be a little more realistic.

Ugs this makes me so sad......It would be nice if we could stop the war whenever we feel it's getting too ugly. But that's just not possible. If we did stop the war out of the blue, agreed with everyone who's against it at this point, and sent our troops home, it would not be good. Think about it, people. We would have terrorists once again in charge over there, and probably 100x worse than it was before. Now I don't know what's going on over there. Nobody will ever really know the truth. I mean what do you all expect, Bush to admit that we've been torturing POWs? Why, so more of our troops will be in danger over the actions of a few? Not just troops are endangered when this stuff comes out, as all those beheadings proved. I am very upset to hear about this stuff. I am not so naiive as to think torture never happens over certain captives that might know something. But it's still upsetting to hear that some random torture and killing happened for no apparent reason. If this is the case and it comes out proven as such, I hate to think of the results.

If nothing else, it is BECAUSE of the good being done through humanitarian aid, etc. that one should be outraged at the torture of suspects. Aside from being a gross violation of human rights, it taints these humanitarian efforts being made by the US, also giving fodder to terrorists to recruit more to their ranks, which US soldiers in Iraq can do without now, I think ..One death at the hands of a rogue police officer DOES diminish the inherent justice of a system, at least the perception thereof. That is why you need to have inquiries when there is abuse like this and in cases of police brutality to find out what happened and to try to address it. It assumes that a standard has been violated, which should not have been violated and it has tainted the good that is doneThis country has been a great friend to many nations across the world, and would like to be seen as a moral leader I would have thought that Americans who consider themselves patriotic would be pretty upset (as has Magellan) at this besmirching of the reputation of the USA and abhor the idea that the USA would condone this sort of treatment of detainees and demand that it be corrected. It IS an important issue and deserving of attention, regardless of whether you opposed the war or notHe who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you....UPDATE: The world never has been black or white. Various totalitarian regimes in the past would have had their people believe that this was the case and used it to justify whatever they did. This makes international standards all the more important. However LR raises a good point about the difficulty in defining torture as somewhere on the sliding scale between discomfort and death, so that people all know what they are debating, although I think we are probably all talking about the same thing. Incidentally, talking about distortion by attention, to quote Douglas Johnson from the Centre for Victims of torture: Torture has always been justified by reference to a small number of people who know about the 'ticking time bomb' but in practice it has always been extended to a much wider population. I think that Magellans example of the taxi driver illustrates that perfectly.

Technique #1 by anti-war advocates: reduce the war effort to a single (or even a couple) definable case(s) of impropriety and magnify its (their) significance to roil and obfuscate the discussion. (This of course is taking into account the worth of the story given the accounted behavior of the mendacious mainstream press) We've taken in close to 50,000 detainees, most of whom were caught attempting to kill American soldiers. And even if 100 were treated improperly, tortured or killed does that negate the intention of the war effort? Does one death at the hands of a rouge police officer diminish the inherent justice of our whole system? Or should we be judged on how we deal with improprieties that occur? Technique #2 Distortion by attention: Magellan, as well as the liberal cohorts in the manipulative media are anti-war. Their attention therefore is overwhelming fixated on those things that support their worldview. Butchery, beheadings, bombings of hospitals and schools: telling from the attention given them by Magellan you'd think they didn't happen or does he simply not care about them? Over 1000 stories have been run in the NYT about Abu Graib, how many have you seen about the 500 schools that were built in Iraq? The new power plants? About the 1000 hospitals? Has Magellan written copiously about the elections? Hell, did you hear about all the women, children and political prisoners that were tortured by Saddam? About the hundreds of mass graves unearthed since we liberated Iraq? Has Magellan written a post wailing about the 250,000 skeletons we've found in shallow unmarked graves??? Of course he hasn't!! But hell, the NYT's reports a Afghani taxi driver may have been killed, now that's important! Technique #3 just plain lie: 37 have died in custody? Accuse US soldiers of torturing 20 of them to death with absolutely no proof. If someone has data that says different simply dismiss it! Bush conspiracy! Of course nobody dies of natural causes- they simply had to be murdered by United States soldiers! Even though the death rate is comparable to that in our prisons? Who cares! The United States soldiers are the enemies you see... the Bush administration is the evil doer here! We brought terrorism on ourselves. It's all our fault that we were attacked on 9-11! It's our fault we're a target for Al Queda! This is just pure bullcrap. And since when are we saying all torture is impermissible? Or are we too limited in our thinking to understand that sometimes torture- or things defined now as torture- needs to occur to gain information? Are the terrorists abiding by the Geneva convention? Of course they aren't- ask those contractors hanging from the bridge in Fallujah if they were offered a bible to read from and three squares a day. Oh and all those beheadings- they were Bush's fault! To be totally honest if we have to torture a couple of terrorists within some sort of guidelines to get the answers we need to save more lives in the end then so be it. There are discernments to be made between those accepting the parameters set by the free world and those acting upon nihilistic barbarism- and our guidelines should reflect those realities. I would have no problem supporting the United States interogators putting Khalid Muhammad's balls in a vice and crushing them if it would lead to Bin Laden's capture. But I guess we should try not to take pictures of the terrorists with panties on their heads, Magellan might have a cow.*****Update, torture is a somewhat relative term somewhere in between discomfort and death. What I have consistently stated is that within parameters torture needs to be applied in congruence with the level of threat. It would be foolish to say that you wouldn't torture someone if you knew he had information where a nuclear bomb was going to be detonated. Should we torture with willy-nilly caprice? Of course not. But it needs to be used. In the end what iritates me the most is all these unsubstantiated claims of abuse to slander our troops and the war effort. Even if there are a couple incidents does that dismiss all the heroic efforts our soldiers give day in and out? Far from it!

Haven't we all learned that Americans don't care about what happens to those we consider 'less' than us? Of COURSE we look the other way concerning interrogation. That would mean taking responsibility. . .and we don't do that rather well. . .Publicly, the gov't has to be against torture. Privately, they have practiced it in some cases and have handed over suspects to nations where torture is the status quo - thus washing our hands. There is the public language of a government and a private language. I don't like being lied to- but I know transfer of responsibility when I see it. I think there are more important issues - this one speaks to (1) dishonesty and (2) the inability or unwillingness of Americans to deal with truth concerning their gov't. Can't bomb the sh#t out of people and scream 'democracy' while torturing people. . .at least do a better job at lying.

UPDATE: Specific to mag's rhetorical question, I don't see a team saying it's alright. I thought we were rating this as political issues by importance. The numbers of people who protest the executions of domestic murderers is a miniscule percentage of the general population. Most people read the story and shrug, as most of America is doing with this story. The US military is investigating this and courts martial are being conducted. Why don't we see what those investigations yield before we decide that we have military anarchy? This is the type of story the mainstream press should be responsible to cover, but they have been so partisan and irresponsible recently that they have lost credibility with many people. However, when it could do harm to Bush's reelection, the story was covered, extensively and in graphic detail. Where are they now and isn't it suspicious they also are guilty of ignoring it? The military's track record for investigating this type of problem is pretty solid, hysterical press practices notwithstanding. Many of the bad apples have been identified, more will be, I don't need to lose sleep over the exact number or the specifics of the situation. ORIGINAL COMMENT 1/13/05: In the grand scheme of things, this issue will pass and very few Americans will form or render any opinion (or awareness) on it. If the US press is outraged about it, they haven't conveyed such to the American people, or maybe they were so infatuated with Abu Graib as a way to embarrass the President during the campaign, they've jaundiced their audience to any mention of it. This issue has no traction. Its most detailed airing occurred during the Senate confirmation hearings for Gonzales. I'm no fan of Gonzales, but insinuating his legal brief regarding POW handling somehow opened the door to the abuses at Abu Graib is ridiculous. The Abu Graib scandal is a military problem, the confirmation of an Attorney General a political issue. If the administration had opened such a Pandora's Box there would be numerous other (overly zealous) reporters exposing a pattern of such prison conduct. No such pattern exists outside of Abu Graib. The prisoners at Gitmo are terrorist suspects, all of them. When they are vindicated, they are released.

In a war situation, I think torture is okay because it may help save an American life. Also, sometimes I wonder if people have forgotten that these terrorists want us personally killed. Do what you want with the psycho terrorists. This isn't nearly as important as other issues.

I agree, we need more of it if it will save American lives.

While I can see how this is a serious issue for some people, the fact is that so few people know this is going on. Those that do just don't care. When you think of what the terrorists do to US soldiers when they take them as prisoners, we seem like saints.

This is extremely upsetting. We are supposed to be a humane and caring country, and we should not be involved in sadistic torture.