FUROR OVER CHENEY ON TACTICS FOR TERROR SUSPECTS

This is an article that deals with the vice-president of the US, Dick Cheney, saying that he is alright with moderate forms of torture on detainees. He has received much criticism for that statement which was made on a conservative talk show. However was he wrong? When Americans are captured by foreign governments are they given the rights of the Geneva convention? The answer to that question is a hands down no. to successfully fight a war one must have an upper hand on the intelligence front of matters. Now given that that may be by negative means it is better for somebody who is willing to kill you to suffer than for you to suffer. This also is not the first time which torture was an important issue to the citizens of America.

Another time when interrogation was a hot button issue was back in the Vietnam War era. American POWs were taken to infamous locations such as the “Hanoi Hilton” and tortured mercilessly until they confessed to false things. One of the people who can best comment on torture is the Arizona politician John McCain. Sen. McCain was an air force pilot who was shot down over Vietnam. He was captured and tortured at the aforementioned “Hanoi Hilton”. He has long been a harsh critic of those who use torture as a means to attain information. He argues that all that is attained is false information that the interrogated individual admits under great duress. It is obvious why he would argue that point. He, himself, admitted to something that was untrue under the great stress of harsh interrogation methods that the Vietnamese employed. One could argue that the Americans are on the same levels the Vietnamese.

No, we are not on the same level. When the members of the Vietnamese intelligence or military carried out an interrogation of an American soldier they would put a piece of paper down that said they committed various acts that it was impossible to committed. They would then be beaten to the point where they would sign the piece of paper. The American soldiers, on the other hand, use persuasion techniques that are used to get the answer correct information from an individual that possesses it. The CIA officers doing the interrogation are not just blindly fishing for information. They have as much intelligence as they can acquire from afar and they must either, establish a mole of some sort and/or, attain vital information that can save peoples lives.

The fact remains that the United States government does have prisons in the Eastern Bloc countries. We also have a tendency to let the Egyptian intelligence service torture suspects while clandestine CIA operative tell them what to do. To be honest is that even an object able thing. If these people where not being tortured they would go back to ploting to kill everyone who is not a Muslim. So, the important question is would you rather have Islamic Fascists such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed tortured to ascertain his next heinous plot in the works, or, your innocent neighbor and her family blown up when they go to get ice cream? Unfortunately that is the reality that we face when it comes to religious fundamentalism such as that which exists in our current society.