So in the last few days a Senate committee has released its findings after investigating the torture of suspected terrorists. Some of the findings are very surprising to say the least. Below I have links to two articles detailing some of the findings. One article talks about how over 80 million dollars of taxpayer money went to two air force psychologists to devise new torture techniques. Another article talks about how some of the prisoners were treated in the military's so called "black prisons."
I would like you to read the two articles that I have linked and then read a third article on your own of your own choice. I then would like you to blog a reaction to the two articles I required you to read as well as the link and reaction to the article you chose-Limit your blog to 300-350 words. Comment on my blog in at least 100 words answering my question "when does torture cross the line" and comment on a member who commented on my blog from my other class (history to government or vice versa). This will be your last assignment for the nine weeks.
CIA's Salt prison article
Two Docs got 80 million
article of your choice
Checklist of things to do in this blog:
300-350 word blog on above articles responding to all three
include link to your article of choice
100 words or more comment on my blog answering the question "When does torture cross the line"
response to a member of my other class to their comment on my blog
When does torture cross the line for me? Torture starts to cross the line to me when someone is to the point where they are pretty much dead. It’s a little in human to pretty much kill someone by almost drowning them. It crosses the line when they are mentally abused and physically abused to. It’s not right to get them to die pretty much, but then again that is really the only way to get the information out of the terrorists. It is pretty much the only way is by nearly killing them because then there really scared to so they give them the answer. I think it crosses the line if they would kill them while trying to get the information.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely! People are so against torture but to an extent it is needed for information. But like you said it needs to be limited! They shouldn't be able to torture these people to the point of death.
DeleteI agree with your statement. Torture is necessary to extract information, but it should be done as humanely as possible.
DeleteI agree with you! Torture is somewhat needed for information. People who are torturing them, should be limited! They have the same rights as we do.
DeleteWhen does torture cross the line? It's a very tough question to answer. When you think about torture everyone would hope that it wouldn't happen to them so they would be against it. I would ask these people why not because other countries would do it to our people so why not? Well in a lot of these torture chambers these people have to fight just to stay alive. I don't think that we should be allowed to torture people to the extent that doctors are needed to revive them so the torture can continue. That is wrong and just terrible. But I believe that torture in moderation is needed to get the information that is needed. But you shouldn't be able to torture them to the point of death.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your views on some scale. Yes, it is not humane, but is it even necessary to do what other countries do? That is kind of what got us into all the hated relationships with other countries that we have today. Other than that, I completely agree with you.
DeleteI agree with what you said in your comment dbark52. I think we should be able to torture people, but to an extent as you said. we are just trying to get information out of them to keep us safe. Plus.... they do it to our people to. Good comment!
DeleteI believe that there is a certain point where torture is unreasonable. Reading the article about the “black prisons” raised a few questions and points. I do not think that anyone should be allowed to hang prisoners by their wrists, or drag them up and down the hall ways. I think that water-boarding is okay to a certain extent. I think that other things are okay too, just as long as the person that they are interrogating doesn’t almost die multiple times, or lose limbs and mass amounts of blood during the interrogation. I believe that the Geneva Convention should make some more rules about this.
ReplyDelete- Brent
I believe that organizations like the CIA that use torture as a means to extract information need to revise there techniques to be more effective, quick and less barbaric. Every human being has rights no matter how much wrong they have done. Reducing terrorists to mere animals will only hurt their pride it will not extract information.
ReplyDeleteI agree! We should have certain morals to maintain as humans. Every human has rights no matter what they have done.
DeleteI agree completely on your statement that seems al little short! we all are human that have morals to stand by. nobody has rights no matter what
DeleteI believe that under these circumstances, the line has been crossed with the extent of torture. After reading the articles about the conditions that the suspected terrorists were put in, I think that the line was crossed. Obviously the CIA is trying to gain information from the terrorists, but I think that they could get this information by using other sources. Some of the terrorists died due to the torturing, and many others came very close to death. For me, this proves that the torturing was over-excessive and clearly crossed the line. In the future, I think that new and less violent methods need to be tried to obtain information about terrorism.
ReplyDelete-Bo Fries
I agree with you bo20sefuss. There has to be better ways of obtaining information instead of beating a person to near death. It needs to be changed.
DeleteI agree with your view on torturing on prisoners. I hope that the government will come up with new ways to get information out. The line has been crossed way to far and we need new ways.
DeleteI agree with the fact that we need to use less violent torture methods. I believe we push it to far sometimes but we should still torture them for the reason why we have them in a facility where they can be tortured in the first place.
DeleteI also agree with you Bo20sefuss. There are definitely more ways other than torture to get information. I also agree with "MyBoySmitty #Foreal" when he said there needs to be changes.
DeleteWhen does torture cross the line? Well that's a hard question but they way these prisoners had it is they were tortured enough to where their bones were broken and or feet were broken. They had to fight to stay alive in this manner, this is very brutal. You should cross the line when a person dies it seems because these people let their prisoners rot in a salt pit which is commonly called a dungeon, or hang them from over head bars letting their waste go into buckets, or even water board them 183 times. I say the line should be crossed when they have had enough, also with the certain amount of time.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that interrogation of suspected terrorists is necessary to some extent. Valuable information can be obtained from these prisoners, and helpful to the protection of the United States. Although, some of the techniques are all too cruel. We have to remember they are human. Many of the torture methods are almost inhumanly cruel. As people of the 20th century I believe that we should have fairly advanced methods of "torture." I feel that non-violent methods of interrogation should be used. So when exactly does torture cross the line? I believe that no human should stoop as low as to take another humans life. I do believe that the line of torture is crossed far before death, causing someone physical and mental harm, and taking to a degree that they wish they were dead is just as bad. Taking away their sanity and breaking their bones is in no way helping the United States, just making us all look bad.
ReplyDeleteWhen does torture cross the line? I honestly don’t think that torturing these people is a bad thing. I think if it is a way to get things out of them and it works than we should do it. But this doesn’t mean that I agree with the way that we are doing it. I think that when we torture someone into a coma or to the point where we honestly don’t know if they will live after what we have done to them that is too far. I believe we need to find better ways of torturing and we need to continue torturing.
ReplyDeleteWhen does torture cross the line? Torture will never be the answer. There are plenty of ways to go through with getting information. But really, if no new information that was coming in was helpful, why would you keep torturing the person. Torture is physically and mentally wrong. You would think that the CIA guards would have some human ethics but no. They had no regard for human life as they just broke down prisoners down to the point of having no sanity. To me it just doesn't make sense. A complete waste of money more like it.
ReplyDeleteWhen does torture cross the line? We as humans, we are all the same. Just because some people are different race or religion doesn’t mean we have to treat them poorly. Some American’s believe that we should and need to torture the prisoners to get information out them. I do not believe that violence is the answer to everything. In this situation I think we need to come at it from the prisoner’s angle. How would you like it if you were chained and left alone and naked in a cell? That would make you not want to talk and be let go. We need to come at this at a more humane angle. We need to try and just talk to them and not harm them. Is would maybe make them actually want to talk and not keep it to themselves. I think that these salt pits have crossed the line way too far. We need to stop this violence and try something new for the interrogations.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. Violence is not the answer, we need to think of new ways to interrogate. People need to think of things before they do them. Things would go crazy if it was an American in a cell chained and naked!
DeleteI agree with you, no one should be put in a cell left and chained and naked. That is just not something that should be happening and it should not be done to anyone, nobody diverse that. I agree with you that we need to come at it from the prisoner's angle.
DeleteI agree with you. Why does torture have to be the method to get information out of them? We need to think of new ways other than torture to get them to talk.
DeleteWhen does torture cross the line? It crosses the line when we spend $80 million dollars of taxpayer's money to find solutions to torture human beings in barbaric ways. Why on earth could we be using that type of money on a sadistic reason when we could be finding better ways to spend that huge amount of money, like feeding the poor or improving life in underdeveloped countries. Terrorists are human too! They don't deserve torture. Yes, they've done some bad things that have put our country and the citizens of the U.S. in shock and sadness, but they feel psychologically and physical pain like you and I.
ReplyDeleteI agree with SammerHammer. Why should we be spending large amounts of the taxpayers money to torture terrorists? We should be spending that money on the American people instead of on foreign terrorists.
DeleteI do believe that torture tactics can be used to get information from people that we know are terrorist. But I also think that there is a line that should not be crossed when doing so. Once you start treating people like they are animals and make them crawl around on their hands and knees, you have gone too far. When you start spending 80 million dollars to pay doctors to torture people, I believe that you have really crossed the line. I believe that you can use mild torture tactics to gain valuable information, but these people also need to remember to keep it within reason.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading all of the articles and finding my own article about torture. I now know that there isn't even a question if the line has been crossed. The United States is spending eighty million dollars on finding new ways to torture people when they are in debt by billions of dollars..... that definitely does not make any sense. The U.S is only making themselves look bad by torturing these people. People from all over want to come to America and live the American dream. But if we are going to be the new bully, people are definitely going to rethink about coming to our country for a vacation.
ReplyDelete100% agree about how we are trillions of dollars in debt yet we continue to spend $80 million dollars to find ways to traumatize human beings! It just doesn't make sense! It's completely absurd! Keep preaching to the choir Tess!
DeleteI agree with the fact that we do not need to spend those large quantities of money for new ways to torture people. These people know valuable information that America is trying to obtain and if they do not comply then they are tortured. You make a good point Tess! And we are in trillions of dollars of debt, not billions. ;)
DeleteI think torture is a horrible situation to do to a human being, but I guess it helps somewhat to get answers out of the prisoners. It is not the right thing to do because the prisoners have the same rights like the rest of us do. I think torture can only go so far, but going to the point where they have to die should not be acceptable. Hand cuffing them would be fine, but hanging them by their arms for 22 hours is not; somebody should not have to go that far just to torture them for answers. Think if that was you, and you were getting hung by your arms for 22 hours: you wouldn’t like it either.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I like that you mentioned that the prisoners have the same rights like the rest of us do. I also agree that hanging them 22 hours is violent and it shouldn't have been done.
DeleteI totally agre with you. I belive that the prisioners have the same right that the other people. I think that they went to far leaving a man 22 hours haging by his arms. The violence is not the answer.
DeleteI’m against torturing and it doesn’t matter who is torturing and whom. I do believe that no one has right to torture. CIA was trying to gain information about terrorist groups but it doesn’t mean that they should torture them and make some of them die. There are other, more civilized methods that they could have used to gain the information they needed. They can effect on them physiologically. In that way the detainees would not die and maybe would tell them the information they need. I do believe that CIA crossed all lines of torture and that the torturers should be convicted.
ReplyDeleteWhen does torture cross the line? I think torture crosses the line when it comes to the point of having a prisoner beg for death, just so someone can get answers out of them. No one should have to pay someone to come up with new and worse ways of torturing someone. But interrogating someone trying to scare them to the answers out of them is different, because you’re not using physical abuse. Even lowering ranking of CIA agents are complaining about the techniques that the higher ranking agents use. I truly believe that using forms of torture should be one of the last resorts and we should imprison those who use abuse torture methods.
ReplyDeleteWhen does torture cross the line? I think torture crosses the line when death is the best way out of it for the detainees or when they die during the torturing process. Torturing is a way to get information out of people, but I think the torture tactics that they are using right now are too violent. There are other ways of torture that could be used that would not kill the person you are trying to get information out of. People should not get paid 80 million dollars to think of torture tactics, especially when the money is from tax payers.
ReplyDeleteWhen does torture cross the line? I do not think it is right for 80 million dollars of taxpayer money to be going to psychologists to find new torture methods. The government is trying to find out valuable information about dangerous people, but maybe just in excessively violent ways. I’m sure our government has been using torture methods for decades but because of the media has expanded so much the facts are starting to spill out. And the people that have gotten the worst of these torture methods have done horrible thing to other people. For example, one the men was a guard for Osama Bin Laden who devised a plan to kill 2,996 people on 9/11/01.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading these two articles about tortures, the question is “when does torture cross the line?”
ReplyDeleteWhat I think torture somebody is cross the line. Some people believe that torture will give them the information they want. I do not believe that you have to torture somebody to obtain information. I do not believe either that the violence will give you the answer. There are many other ways to obtain the information. So, when the government gave 80 million dollars, they definitely crossed the line. And they did not really using new methods. So, the money they gave was wasted, when they could use it for better things.
When does torture cross the line? I do not think that torturing bad people for information is bad. It helps us get information on what they are up to and what they are planning to do. It gives us the upper hand in different situations, critical situations. But I do not think that paying a couple of people 80 million dollars just to find new ways to torture people was needed. It’s not like they’re the only ones that could come up with different ways to torture, so why pay them so much when they could get those answers for way less of a price and maybe even free. I think it was 80 million dollars we didn’t need to spend.
ReplyDeleteWhen does torture cross the line? Well for me torture crosses the line when the detainee is being tortured enough to the point where he or she is almost dead. It definitely crosses the line when torture ends up killing the male or female alleged terrorist. What would happen if the alleged terrorist was innocent and hadn’t done anything terrorist like, and then the CIA tortured this person to death? That crosses the line for me. What I am saying is that, I don’t disagree with torture, but I believe that there are more efficient, less costly ways to get the information from these alleged terrorists that the CIA wants.
ReplyDeleteIf there is a better way I am sure we would be using it. The point of torture is to make them fear for their life or cause great physical pain so they talk. They have the choice of talking and if they do then we will stop. Some people will die and that is sad because we should not kill while torturing.
DeleteI agree with Kball a prisoner should not be even close to death while in custody. I also think that detainees should not be tortured while in custody without having a trial.
DeleteWhen dose torture cross line? This is a hard question to answer but it is when you are doing it for fun and not to get the crucial information to save lives. The point of torture is to be unpleasant so they talk but once they talk we need to stop torturing them and just hold them in a jail cell. Once they have talked we have no point in going on and must stop. If information is misleading or not right then torture is to resume right away. The way they do it is up to the person doing the torturing but it should be an active torture not just one person sitting there keeping the other awake for days. That is lazy.
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is a fine line when it comes torturing prisoners. Many people have very different opinions on where that line should be and how people should be punished when someone crosses that line. I believe that we can interrogate very heavily but I think that we as the United States do not have the right to torture. The reason why I believe that the United States has no right to torture is because we are part of organizations that are against torture. If the United States would continue to torture we would go against the organizations we have set in place to stop torture.
ReplyDeleteI believe that torture crosses the line when people continually harm someone to the point where they cannot handle it and they'd rather be dead than alive. This is probably what they do at the various torture camps around the United States. I also think that Obama should not pardon the people responsible for these camps. He should charge them with all the crimes they have done within the statute of limitations. I also think that if she does continue the search for the people who are in charge of these camps the interrogators will also do crimes that Obama does not allow.
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