Music As Torture

[yerfer]

They could play this for them.

[brickhistory]

The whole thing is another area where there is no correct answer and the current Administration had to do something.

First, those detained are not POWs. They were not part of a nation's uniformed military. In fact, by not being in uniform (never mind the non-state actor part), they could be considered spies. With the legally and historically accepted ending for spies.

With the exception of Germany in WWII, when is the last time any foe of the US followed the Geneva Conventions? Japan, a signatory, I believe, sure didn't. Korea, North Vietnam, China (held a couple of off-course USAF/USN pilots for 7 years) didn't. No tears or outrage for the dudes held by the Soviets in the gulag and have disappeared? The guys in OIF/OEF who've been captured weren't accorded very good treatment. Oh, sorry, I guess getting your throat cut is humane compared to being kept awake.

No, it's just the US who has to play nice. I'm fine with a changing world reputation. Wanna be the leader? Then man up and do it yourself. Can't/won't? STFU.

They aren't criminals because they were captured/turned in in foreign lands. Did they break US law by doing something in a 'stan? Don't think so.

Are most of them probably really, really evil things that don't belong above ground? Yeah, I think so.

The fact that they weren't administered 5.56mm justice at the time of capture says a LOT about the US. Don't give me any bullshit about the high moral ground. I personally could care less. That big pit in NYC and getting chased out of the Pentagon was enough for me. I don't really care if I draw the aprobation of the left or of Europe.

These guys want to kill Westerners. And any of their own who don't immediately agree with them. There is no negotiation. There is no compromise. There is no middle ground.

Funny how many of the countries that these guys nominally belong to don't want 'em. Or we can't send 'em back because they'll be tortured.

Finally, for all the angst about waterboarding and the like, I A) think it's been blown all out of proportion, the actual numbers involved are a handful and B) if stressing KSM stops another mass casualty event in the US, I can live with the self-rightious (sp?) shrieks of the NY Times or the Washington Post. It's all fun and games until your city center goes up with a bang and a mushroom cloud.

[nsplayr]

...if stressing KSM stops another mass casualty event in the US, I can live with the self-rightious (sp?) shrieks of the NY Times or the Washington Post. It's all fun and games until your city center goes up with a bang and a mushroom cloud.

Just for irony's sake, don't those "shrieks" at the Times and Post live in the very two cities that were attacked on 9/11? And what exactly is a shriek used as a noun??

I'm not one to argue that the dudes at guantanamo should be treated like kindergartners, but taking a stand against torture and open-ended detention with no exit strategy sounds fine to me. Charge them in military tribunals and then throw them in maximum security prisons...send them back to wherever we got them if there's no evidence...drop them on a raft in the middle of the ocean...just figure out something. I don't personally know what to do with these guys now that we've held them for so long in a kind of grey area in the law and especially since their intelligence value is shot, but that's something our leadership should have thought of before we captured these guys and brought them to to gitmo.

I'd also draw the line at US citizens...if you're a citizen then you should be afforded the privileges of a trial by a jury of your peers...hard to argue against that one in my mind.

[brickhistory]

nsplayer, my use of the word "shrieks" is correct.

shrieks: a noun; loud, emotionally charged, usually, but not always of fear or outrage, outpourings of emotion. a verb; to shriek, to produce such a sound.

To your point of those two papers' locations, yes.

Which is why I don't understand them. Other than it is auto-anti-Bush.

I agree with Gitmo being an open-ended problem.

But those who cry against it are/will be the same ones who want skulls to blame if/when another mass casualty event occurs in the US.

You can't have it both ways. But they want it.

Let's see what the incoming Administration decides about some of these characters. It's very easy to criticise, not so much to have to be the one taking action.

Bet they don't wind up in the US prison system. Nor should they. They are not criminals.

[Herk Driver]

...send them back to wherever we got them if there's no evidence...drop them on a raft in the middle of the ocean...just figure out something.

That's been figured out and folks are working on it, but the US won't just up and send a guy back to country x when they know that the gov't will torture and kill the guy. Talk about ironic.

[Longhorn15]

I'd also draw the line at US citizens...if you're a citizen then you should be afforded the privileges of a trial by a jury of your peers...hard to argue against that one in my mind.

Agreed, and considering where they were captured, it should not take very long to convict them of treason and have them executed. Which would then raise the ironic circrumstance where foreigners were accorded better treatment than US citizens. I wonder what the liberals would think about that.

[nsplayr]

Agreed, and considering where they were captured, it should not take very long to convict them of treason and have them executed. Which would then raise the ironic circrumstance where foreigners were accorded better treatment than US citizens. I wonder what the liberals would think about that.

What the liberals would think of that? I wonder what Americans would think of that? I don't think anyone wants to see our citizens treated poorly by their own government but neither does anyone want to see American criminals executed while foreign criminals are let free. Honestly, I don't think it would come to that because not very many people are executed compared to the number of people in US prisons.

[LockheedFix]

What the liberals would think of that? I wonder what Americans would think of that? I don't think anyone wants to see our citizens treated poorly by their own government but neither does anyone want to see American criminals executed while foreign criminals are let free. Honestly, I don't think it would come to that because not very many people are executed compared to the number of people in US prisons.

His point - if you read the post correctly - is that they most likely would be executed, not tortured or treated poorly, if they were convicted of treason. Which is worse than what many of these terrorists at Gitmo have gotten. People in US prisons are not executed very often, or quickly, but traitors are...as they should be.

The boots, the boots....I feel I'm entitled to millions now.

Stomping over Africa...there's no just cause in the war!

Edited December 22, 2008 by LockheedFix

[Guest Almost There]

Rage? NIN?

These guys don't know how lucky they are... to be exposed to some of the best Western music of this generation.

Babies.

[Clayton Bigsby]

"Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss me love...just one kiss, one kiss will do..."

[pbar]

The problem with Guantanamo was there was no end state. What was suppose to happen with the guys there? A perpetual state of limbo? Something had to be done with them one way or another....after so many years, their intelligence value declines due to no recency of experience, so to speak. So far as the precedent set, look at Jose Padilla. Enemy combatant held in a U.S Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. for years with no status, no contact to lawyers, no charges, nothing. Not a good precedent to set at all. Am in no means saying we should baby prisoners, but we need to do something with them...one way or the other.

I believe this is the whole point of Gitmo. How else do you deter people who not only aren't afraid of death, but welcome it? This is the only end-state that they fear and that has the power to cause them to re-evaluate their chosen path...

[HercDude]

I vote put these guys in regular federal prison. Let good ole US of A convicts take care of it. I bet those guys wouldn't last a week.

Swing & a miss.

Do you have any clue what kind of people are in Federal Supermax prisons? Guys like the Unabomber, Richard Reid, & Terry Nichols aren't likely to waste time disciplining suspected terrorists.

[MadMac]

Pack up GITMO and send them here to Texas.

We'll create a new prison system just for them.

We'll even give them a trial...right before we put'em down.

Edited January 14, 2009 by MadMac

[StoleIt]

I like how it isn't highly mentioned how 1 in 3 Gitmo prisoners who are released are recaptured or killed fighting US troops. I am betting the other two just haven't been caught yet also.

Fact of the matter is the people in Gitmo aren't there because they threw a shoe at POTUS, they are there because they got caught planting IED's or shooting at US troops. These people aren't innocent.

[yerfer]

I like how it isn't highly mentioned how 1 in 3 Gitmo prisoners who are released are recaptured or killed fighting US troops. I am betting the other two just haven't been caught yet also.

Fact of the matter is the people in Gitmo aren't there because they threw a shoe at POTUS, they are there because they got caught planting IED's or shooting at US troops. These people aren't innocent.

It doesn't help releasing them back into the wild. Just the other day I was watching the military channel and a group of Marines were looking for a guy that was caught before, taken to G.bay and then released only to kill more Americans.

What the hell is the logic in that? Catch and release only works in fishing...

[Steve Davies]

Fact of the matter is the people in Gitmo aren't there because they threw a shoe at POTUS, they are there because they got caught planting IED's or shooting at US troops.

If those facts are so solid, then why have these people not all been charged and convicted?

Your view is not substantiated by either a) the number of detainees America has released without charge, or b) the number you have actually sentenced. The official stats show that there have been 775 detainees... 420 of whom have been released them without charge.

Even assuming that they are all killers, holding them in a cell for eight years and then releasing them without charge is just a stupid thing to do. And you wonder why these people - who were already radical, or in the process of being radicalised, before they went in - come out and actually do kill Americans?

If you need to ponder why the Gitmo 're-offenders rate' is something that nobody talks about, then you will find the answer in all of the above.

I don't have a problem with locking up shit bag terrorists and their sympathisers, but it needs to be done properly.

[brickhistory]

Steve,

We've gone 'round on this before and will not come to an agreement.

Granted, some of the ones sent were dimed out back in the old country to settle old internal scores, earn points with the Americans, etc, etc.

Many, many others weren't.

I believe the majority of those mistakes were sent back.

The ones left aren't criminals. They aren't POWs. They are something new. Therefore the models of the past simply don't work on them.

Perhaps you'd prefer a little 5.56mm justice instead of being alive and eating and praying at Uncle Sam's expense? Rhetorical, by the way.

Funny, many nations don't want 'em back, we won't send 'em back to places where they could be tortured or killed. Our 'friends' don't want 'em. (Don't blame those friends, I wouldn't want these rabid dogs in my borders either. Hmm, wonder why they're still locked up?)

Heard this as one solution; open the gates at Gitmo, let 'em enjoy Cuba. Could be a nice payback for the Mariel boatlift of the 1980s...

Edited January 15, 2009 by brickhistory

[M2]

I'll post more on this later, but for now I wanted to make sure that everybody understood that while the argument that the Geneva Convention may not apply here, US law still does...

United States Code TITLE 18 - CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE PART I - CRIMES CHAPTER 113C - TORTURE

§2340 - Definitions

As used in this chapter -

(1) "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

(2) "severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from -

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

© the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

(3) "United States" includes all areas under the jurisdiction of the United States including any of the places described in sections 5 and 7 of this title and section 46501(2) of title 49.

§2340A - Torture

(a) Offense. - Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

(b) Jurisdiction. - There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if -

(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or

(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.

© Conspiracy. - A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

§2340B - Exclusive Remedies

Nothing in this chapter shall be construed as precluding the application of State or local laws on the same subject, nor shall anything in this chapter be construed as creating any substantive or procedural right enforceable by law by any party in any civil proceeding.

If anyone is interested, go find the declassified DOJ memos on interrogation techniques. I am going through them at this very moment for a grad school paper on Ethics due in a week; but I will post up more info after that.

But in the mean time, the bottom line is that basically the detainees are spending their days reading up on our laws and playing them against us! Smart little buggers, they are; and the media just eats it all up!

Cheers! M2

[JarheadBoom]

...bottom line is that basically the detainees are spending their days reading up on our laws and playing them against us!

Huh... sounds just like the regular US prison system.

[M2]

So I guess some detainees are trying to sue citing they have been permanently traumatized by listening to Rage Against The Machine, NIN, etc. Video here: CNN. Wow...just wow.

JHB

The highlighted section is what gives them leverage. If you read the USC I posted, you will understand how the lawyers will pick up on this specific detail and use it against the government in court....

[JarheadBoom]

M2 - you didn't quote me. Your quote is someone else's post from '08...

[M2]

M2 - you didn't quote me. Your quote is someone else's post from '08...

Yeah, I know, I quoted the original post in reference to your question. The emphasis is on "permanent" is what makes it a violation of USC Title 18, § 2340 on Torture...

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm...

Cheers! M2

[slacker]

Pretty good letter (could be fake) from a former Navy pilot to Obama in regards to getting water boarded in SERE school. He's calling for an investigation of the admistrations involved.

Yes, I got this in an email and no, I have no way of knowing if it's a real letter. I have my doubts because I've never met a Naval Avaitor that called themselves a pilot.

Navy_Pilot.pdf

[Guest Hueypilot812]

Here's an article from CNN regarding the use of torture among drug criminals along the US-Mexican border:

Torture a hallmark of Phoenix's drug kidnappings

PHOENIX, Arizona (CNN) -- Jaime Andrade had just gotten out of the shower when the men came to snatch him.

His wife, Araceli Valencia, was mopping the kitchen in their family home on a typical warm spring morning in Phoenix, Arizona, "when she suddenly felt a hard object pointed to the back of her head and a voice in Spanish tell her not to move," according to a Phoenix, Arizona, police investigative report.

"I told you not to look at me!" Valencia heard one of the kidnappers bark as he struck Andrade across the head.

Her four children bawling, Valencia was hustled into a bedroom where an armed man fondled her and threatened to rape her if she didn't tell him where Andrade hid his money, according to the report.

After beating and binding Andrade, one of the kidnappers put a gun to Valencia's head. His message: We're taking your husband and SUV. We'll be watching your house. If you call the cops, he's a dead man.

Andrade, his wife would later tell police, was a mechanic and freelance human smuggler, or coyote. Police say his 2006 kidnapping was evidence of a growing trend in Phoenix: drug and human traffickers abducting each other for ransoms or retribution. Watch why Phoenix is the hotspot »

The trend continues, as police investigated roughly a kidnapping a day in 2007 and 2008 and are on track to shatter those numbers this year. Police are stingy with details of fresh cases navigating the court system, but recently allowed CNN to review the files from Andrade's kidnapping.

For two and a half days after Andrade's abduction, the kidnappers -- including a man whom Andrade later said had been a friend -- deprived their victim of food and water. Through the door of the closet where he was held, Andrade could hear the cries of other victims being tortured in the house, the report said.

Meanwhile, Valencia had defied the kidnappers and called police, who listened to Andrade "scream and howl in pain" over the phone as the kidnappers tried to cut off his ear and a finger. The torture would continue until Valencia came up with the ransom, the kidnappers told her. Hear Andrade's wife plead with the kidnappers »

They were true to their word.

Andrade was pistol-whipped and beaten with a baseball bat and the butt of a rifle. The kidnappers tried to gouge out his eye and slashed open his left eyebrow. They burned his back as well -- presumably, police said, with a blowtorch found at the scene. Read how the next door neighbors knew nothing of this.

The blindfolded Andrade "could feel his pants and underwear being cut open by an unknown person," he told police. He was told to bend over and was beaten when he refused.

"Jaime felt his legs being forced apart and heard Aldo say he was going to get his money," the report said. The kidnappers then sodomized him with a broomstick, a pair of scissors and a wooden dowel used to hang clothes in a closet.

Kidnappers creative with coercion

Ferocity is often a hallmark of the abductions taking place in this south Arizona city of 1.5 million that serves as a prime transshipment point for drugs and human cargo. Watch how the kidnappers choose their targets »

Phoenix police say they have yet to witness the level of violence -- the beheadings, the bodies shoved in drums -- that their counterparts are seeing in Mexico City or the border town of Juarez.

"It gets close sometimes," said Lt. Lauri Burgett, who heads the Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement squad.

Kidnappers will smash their victims' fingers with bricks, snip their backs open with wire cutters, carve them up with knives or simply shoot them.

"We've had them electrocuted. They set them in a tub with water and use kind of barbaric means and zap the tub. I think it was a battery hooked up," Burgett said.

Two kidnappings last year resulted in murders, she added, but it's not the norm.

Phoenix police formed the HIKE squad in October after two years of unprecedented kidnapping numbers -- 357 in 2007 and 368 in 2008 -- gave the city the dubious distinction of being the nation's kidnapping capital. Home invasions were not far behind: 317 in 2007 and 337 in 2008.

"It's all about the money. And there's so much money to be made in this that you can't stop it, but you can try to reveal it, and then you can try to do something about it," Burgett said.

The task force has made dozens of arrests, but as of March 31, the city had 101 reported kidnappings. If the trend continues, Phoenix will record an increase in kidnapping for a fourth straight year.

More frustrating is that the numbers represent only a third, maybe less, of the city's kidnappings, said Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a police spokesman with 16 years of drug enforcement experience. Most kidnappings aren't reported, he said, because the victims are generally smugglers, drug dealers or illegal immigrants -- or some combination of the three.

Other criminals targeted

The most common cases are criminal-on-criminal -- drug smugglers or coyotes snatching rivals or their loved ones. In some cases, a drug dealer may have lost a load or failed to make a payment, but there are also cases when kidnappers do it solely for the ransom, which can be between $30,000 and $250,000, Thompson said.

"[The victims are] wearing the doper bling-bling, and they target them," he said. "We've had several cases where the ransom amount has been $1 million that the person has asked for. In addition to that, they often ask for drugs -- 100 pounds of marijuana, perhaps a pound or two of speed, a pound or two of cocaine or several ounces of heroin."

Phoenix police have even arrested victims after rescuing them, Burgett said.

Less frequent but still accounting for 78 kidnappings last year are cases in which coyotes hold their human cargo captive or steal another coyote's patrons, known as pollos (Spanish for chickens), Burgett said.

Burgett said human trafficking is often linked to the drug trade because both industries require the same routes and subterfuge to ferry their wares into the country. See what other cities have a cartel presence

There are rarely "true victims" in Phoenix's kidnappings, the lieutenant said.

However, one criminal attorney who has represented at least 10 kidnappers in the last decade insists that the coyote business is "uglier than the drug trade" and that pollos are often killed or forced to do coyotes' bidding when they can't come up with the ransoms.

"In the drug business, the people getting killed are in the business. They are not end users, not consumers," said Antonio Bustamente. "In the coyote business, the people killed are really innocent. [First-time] illegal entry is a petty offense."

Though many might debate the innocence of victims entangled in Phoenix's border-related violence, police say there have been instances when the kidnappers snatched the wrong mark.

Girl mistakenly snatched

On the evening of March 17, 2008, a 13-year-old girl and her friend were walking out of a home in the suburb of Avondale. They were planning to play basketball. The friend, according to a police investigative report, was the niece of a man named "Chucky."

Chucky and his cohorts, witnesses told police, had earlier stolen 55 pounds of marijuana and left several men tied up in a vacant house.

Hours later, the investigative report said, armed men arrived at Chucky's sister's house in three vehicles, one a white Chevrolet Tahoe with blue-and-red strobes like the police use.

The men wanted Chucky, their drugs or $24,000. The 13-year-old said she didn't know Chucky. When she tried to walk away, "one of them grabbed her by the neck, pointed a gun at her and forced her in the vehicle," the report said.

Eventually, the men called the girl's mother to demand ransom. A police officer took the phone and informed the men they had the wrong girl. She was released relatively unharmed in the suburb of Surprise.

The case serves as a reminder that as police scramble to tamp the bloodshed before it reaches the levels proliferating south of the border, collateral damage is a reality. Watch how the kidnapping often occur in quiet neighborhoods »

The origins of the kidnappers -- 90 percent of whom hail from the Mexican state from which the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel takes its name -- also remind law enforcement that 150 miles south lies a country racked with a more extreme brand of violence.

The tortured Andrade was fortunate that police were able to find him. On Andrade's third day in captivity, an undercover officer posing as a loan shark convinced the kidnappers to lower their ransom from $50,000 to $10,000 and the title to the Ford Expedition they had stolen.

When the kidnappers arrived at the drop point, a Safeway supermarket parking lot, police swarmed on their green Chevrolet Tahoe, the report said. One of the men, Luis Alberto Castro-Vega, then 23, disclosed Andrade's whereabouts after police promised not to charge him with kidnapping.

Only Castro-Vega has been convicted of crimes associated with Andrade's kidnapping: first-degree burglary, theft by extortion, armed robbery and three counts of aggravated assault. In September 2006, a judge sentenced Castro-Vega to 54 years in prison.

Thompson said he hopes the stiff sentence sends a message that Phoenix police expect the kidnappings and violence to end, regardless of the targets and the perpetrators.

"The problems that occur when it's criminal versus criminal, that's still violence on the streets of America," he said. "If those people get in a gunbattle, those bullets have to go somewhere, and that could be a playground where kids are playing. That could be a neighbor's house where a neighbor is inside sleeping that has nothing to do whatsoever with the illegal activity, but yet they become senseless victims of the violence."

Compare that torture to this "torture": Loud music, sleep deprivation, fear of insects, waterboarding, stress positions, fear of confined spaces...

FYI, apparently various musicians such as Bruce Springsteen are lobbying to "ban music as torture". WTF? I'd much rather listen to loud music for days than go through what the article above describes. Even more puzzling is the fact that many of these "torture" techniques have been performed on US students...does the term "stress position" sound familiar to any of you? What about loud, crazy music being played on and on? How about confined spaces? Anyone?

It angers me that we've allowed the media and special politic groups to manipulate the public into thinking keeping someone awake while playing music somehow constitutes "gruesome" torture, meanwhile we shrug our shoulders at REAL torture being committed elsewhere, and can't connect the dots that the sanctioned interrogation techniques are humane, albeit uncomfortable and full of suck. I italicized sanctioned, because I'm NOT talking about the illegal methods used at Abu Graib and other isolated incidents of interrogations gone wrong (ie, broomstick up the a$$, etc). The people responsible for those non-sanctioned methods were held accountable.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? How our country has really lost the big picture on what torture really is? Or are we really that soft that we think anything less than having a five-star meal while watching cable TV in comfort while in prison is tantamount to torture?