h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think this is more about the US (Bush administration ) coming down on reporters wanting to name the source. If it were a government or military employee they could claim it was a national security secret information gathering area.

Proof and sources has been a consistent battle during the term of this President. Even within the Whitehouse leaks and other stories like the one who let out the spies name. Remember how many *sources there were for the Jessica Lynch story and it was totally false!

There has been one case after another trying to pressure the reporters. I think this story was quite possibly true and it happened early on with the earliest detainees, before the Red Cross was allowed in. It became an issue back then amd the policy was re-written or written for the first time long after some had been locked up quite a while.

I think pressure applied in the right spots made it just fuzzy enough to suit some. Possibly suited both sides in the end if it came down to naming the source.

You may protest that these people believing so strongly in religious symbols & being sexually repressed is silly in this day and age, but the fact is tat they ARE, and using that against them is just as bad as a different form of torture on a more "enlightened" individual... It's not important how mental/physical anguish is achieved if the pain is the same... You wouldn't flush a child's favourite toy down the toilet and expect it to stay calm because it's only a symbol, would you?Using people's weaknesses is bad enough, but claiming to bring freedom&democracy to the world and then using other people's naivite against them is NOT NICE!

'Newsweek ran a story about the Koran being desicrated by the guards of Guantanamo Bay...

Now, this directly led to riots in which over a dozen people died...'



No it didn't. None of us should be quick to believe what we read in the big news sources. Newsweek isn't sure whether the Koran was flushed or not but everybody seems so sure that the story in Newsweek led to the riots. Well, the U.S. government and military isn't so sure:

'The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Air Force General Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else.

According to initial reports, the situation in Jalalabad began on May 10 with peaceful student protests reacting to a report in Newsweek magazine that U.S. military interrogators questioning Muslim detainees at the Guantanamo detention center “had placed Quran s on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book.” By the following day the protests in the city had turned violent with reports of several individuals killed, dozens wounded, and widespread looting of government, diplomatic and nongovernmental assets.

However, Myers said an after-action report provided by U.S. Army Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, commander of the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, indicated that the political violence was not, in fact, connected to the magazine report.'

http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2005/May/13-299433.html




Now I'm buggering off out of here.

I agree ,the riot was not due to a Newsweek article!

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Excellent point!

Yes, and Alfster, how is burning flags any different from flushing the Quran? It's also merely a symbol, but to see the Americans go on about their flag, you'd think it was a god incarnate!

Malabrista,

Exactly no real difference at all, even showing drawings in comics of a US flag being burnt puts various Americans in a rage.

The difference is it's the American flag! and a Quran is a Muslim (and more importantly) non-American book.

However, could burning a US flag in front of an American be effective as a method of torture?

Would Americans have huge riots and demos if their flag was burnt of flushed down the loo during torture?

I have no idea.

And generally the best thing to do when you see a flag of any country is leave it alone. Some countries will throw you in jail for 'desecrating' it.

"And generally the best thing to do when you see a flag of any country is leave it alone. Some countries will throw you in jail for 'desecrating' it."

The flag of a country is, in many ways, a religious symbol. This is probably more obvious in the USA than it is in other Western countries.

TRiG.

I was thrown out of American classrooms quite often for not pledging my allegiance to their flag every morning, I know how important it is to them as a symbolIt's not like I ed the thing, I simply didn't stand up, put my hand on my heart and mouth shallow, empty oaths...

"Whilst it may be nice to be in a country effectively managed by Private Eye, suppose the media in question was one of Mr Murdoch's many organs."

You mean FOX news isn't running the US govt?

Newsweek is hardly the first media outlet to report the accusations of Gitmo interrogators desecrating the Koran and I suspect there are not that many Newsweek subscribers among the rioters in Afghanistan.

As far as the "bring on the dancing girls" line of arguement is concerned, imagine using the same tactics to interrogate Jesuits - trying to make them break their vow of chastity and think impure thoughts. Denying them the opportunity to give holy confession, forcing them to take communion without confessing their sins, using the bible as toilet paper in front of them. What do you suppose the Pope and Catholics around the world would say about that?

cf. post #23 (which went almost completely unnoticed [thanks Abbi]) and also this: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19061 which basically repeats what Rev. just said but in greater detail.


This is all just another addition to the 'mother of all smokescreens', and it seems to be working very well.

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They would not be any happier than devout Muslims, and there is no reason why they should - experience shows that some powers will use (and have used) any means they can think of, for harming their captives. Keeping them in cages in the sun, for one! (Gitmo)

"What do you suppose the Pope and Catholics around the world would say about that?"

Why do you suppose that anyone should take the bleatings of one group of backward superstitious types any more seriously than any other?

Frankly I think it shows great humanity on the part of the interrogators - they've discovered an entirely humane and painless way to apply pressure to these people, and they're doing so by exploiting a weakness these people *actively choose* to have.

Consider: which would YOU rather have happen to you? A woman strip in front of you and proposition you sexually? A man tear pages out of a book and flush them down the toilet in front of you? Or be placed in and forced to maintain a physically uncomfortable position blindfolded in a hot room with loud white noise for 24 hours without a break?

Or from another point of view: consider. You are a humane person. You have a suspected terrorist in your custody, and want information from them. You want to be able to sleep at night. You're trained in many forms of "pressurised interrogation". However, you discover to your delight that the people in your care choose to believe certain irrational things that makes any of your more questionable techniques unnecessary. You don't have to cause them any pain, disorientation, sleep loss or apply drugs to them. All you have to do is tear up a book or smear some red ink on them and tell them it's something else, and they completely crack up.

Wouldn't you, as a responsible human being, select these more humane methods of interrogation in preference to the alternatives?

And wouldn't chortle all the way home at people who are so benightedly ignorant that for them tearing up a BOOK in front of them constitutes torture?

I know I would...

H.

If your prisoner is a masochist, is it torture if you pull out his fingernails? Or is it torture if you don't?

I agree annaga it is mostly a smoke screen.

Behind it is the positions for judges coming up.
The fillabuster question.
The nation closing bases so the US can begin to rely more heavily on Nuclear weapons. ( not enough heard about that)
The Bolton position.
The social security problem that Bushs grand tour turned nearly everybody away from.
The immigration and illegal aliens problems.

The fact that many fundamentalists in the US feel cheated and lied to about the issues that caused him to be their candidate.

The Galloway appearance before the Senate ( Yay - if that was the only good move he has ever made that will do in my book)

The federal agents caught in a huge drug sting.
The possible only woman general that was demoted due to prisoners abuse so that no General could be accused or put on trial for it.

The have ran 3 stories that are dead into the gorund.
The run away bride
The airplanes that went to close to the White house air space.
The ? I forget the other story I was going to mention they keep running that is dead.

We hear plenty about Michael Jackson and Brittany spears.
With all the access to news they keep repeating the most absurb non news stories.

Thought I'd mention I blocked Fox News channels as I consider them unfit for children! It's first time I have censored a broadcast by way of the parental guards I would like to recomend others do too since they count cable sunscribers as watchers.

Hoo, sorry , but I beleive you're off on this one. These people may be deliberately kept in the dark, but they do not "choose" to be. And torturing people mentally is WORSE than your more exquisite physical tortures, it leaves these people unable to think and function, and there are no visible scars, so it is hard to prove... Think of all the silly reasons many people (especially US Americans) are in counseling, then think of having to cope with your entire belief system being destroyed in front of your eyes and having to cope with that all by yourself. Even though you seem to be rather cynical concerning religion, which is your every right, I am sure that there are things you DO believe in that could be used against you - even if you won't admit it.

I agree that mental torture can be worse than physical torture, but is this really torture? I'm being a bit of a Devil's advocate here, putting an alternative point of view. Women stripping & acting provocatively - testing their religious morals, yes - torture? I'm not so sure.

Desecrating a holy book - it's not the original one & only work, is it? Is their faith so weak that the paper the words are written on is more important than the belief?

Hmmm, a bit like telling Manchester United fans that it's only a PLC...


Culturally, we've all got buttons that could be pressed - just because someone elses buttons are completely illogical to us, doesn't make pressing them acceptable.

I do agree with that. The treatment of those prisoners was appalling, but I don't know that I would categorise it as torture.