Just for Pericles.

1. Tell them that you love them.
2. Give them a nice warm bath & some nice clothes.
3. A lolly to be good.
4. A bean bag for time out.
5. A nice hot cup of tea & a lie down.
6. A nice meal.
7. Someone to massage away their fears & worries.
8. A phone call to mummy.
If no information is forthcoming
then, a quick China type trial. (march the guilty bastard in)
end if
9. Out to the nearest Piggery.
10. Find the dirtist piggy mud hole.
11. Terrorist digs own grave in piggy mud hole.
12. Gather the remains of dead pigs to put in grave with terrorist.
13. Give Terrorist one last chance to impart information.
If no information is forthcoming
then execute
End if.

"No Guts or Glory. My bet. No guts." I was refering to the sweetie brigade making a list of how they would extract information from Terrorists. Durrr...

Now how about that list sweeties. or see above.

Ludwig,

I'm surprised. You of all people I thought would have understood that you can hold and support a principle or policy without fully expecting it to be universally adopted.

I'm not alone in my policy stance. It comes from the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment.
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html
Australia is a signatory, as are many other countries. Unfortunately Pakistan and India have not ratified this Convention.

From the Convention:\
Article 2 Section 2
-No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture

I guess there's lots of people at the UN that don't live in the real world.

Jayb,

Congratulations, you would just be a prime candidate for war crimes, or if a state of war is not declared, murder. Quit the stupid bravado. BTW, which 'terrorist' would you be interrogating, the one who just carried out the attack, or the one that hadn't done anything yet?

Bugsy “But you of course you would know this because you live in the real world.”

I suggest, since I cannot convince you or the real issues of this matter you simply read Ludwig’s excellent summation.

In short, “While it might be possible to develop tight guidelines for circumstances under which torture could be exercised, it is just impossible to ever have full confidence that governments or police or the army won’t overstep the mark sometimes. That’s the problem.

Even so, I can’t support a blanket ‘no’ to torture. The world’s just not that black and white.”

When push comes to shove, “necessity” will drive us more powerfully than any “nobler desire” and that is human reality.

Bugsy, I find the notion of absoluteness on this issue… with no exceptions….to be impractical and unreasonable.

For all our good intentions, and I’m with you all the way in wanting the world to be free of torture and ill-treatment of all sorts, there are circumstances where its implementation could be warranted.

Whose human rights take precedent in the case of one terrorist’s rights versus those of hundreds that could be killed if information is not extracted from that terrorist regarding future attacks?

The answer to me is clear-cut.

I mean, we can’t have a situation whereby a captured terrorist can rest assured that if he doesn’t reveal information upon request, he won’t be harmed or won’t suffer any anything worse than a reasonably comfortable long prison term. Obviously if that was the case most people of that sort wouldn’t tell us anything, would they?

So a policy of non-torture or of no strongly coercive information-extraction methods under any circumstances would be very unwise indeed.

With respect Bugsy, it seems that your principled stance is very much like us believing in world peace and therefore never being involved in a fight of any sort and abolishing our armed forces. Not very wise at all.

With all due respect Ludwig, you were the person that convinced me that a policy of sustainable population just may be adopted, in fact must be adopted. The chances of that happening? In my opinion, very small in the near to medium term.

If you want to talk practicalities, it has been mentioned before: one does not know what information the subject has before he (or she) has been tortured. That uncertainty should be enough to clang alarm bells.

The same rationale of saving 'innocent lives' can be used during wartime against downed pilots targeting cities.

The policy must be universal, without exceptions. Laws must be made against the practice, all 'exceptions' must be prosecuted, then the truth of the 'balance of rights' can be ascertained, 'exceptions' will happen I understand this, but they must never be condoned without prosecution. I accept that there are many that don't believe in that in practice a zero tolerance policy on torture can be adopted, under the guise of 'being realistic' or 'pragmatic' simply serves to delay the adoption of tougher laws and helps to prevent them ever being adopted.

You of all people I thought would have understood this Ludwig.

Dear Jayb,

I've been reading all the posts with interest,
and with all this heated arguing, backwards
and forwards.

I've come to the conclusion - that there really
is no easy answer. Of course none of us would
want to deliberately torture any one. That's
not the culture we've grown up in. As Col
points out - who knows what any one of us would
do - if this was our family members we were trying
to save? I too have thought about that one. And as
Col says - I honestly can't predict what my reaction
would be under those circumstances.

My preference would be towards - No Torture - no matter
what the circumstances. But that's not set in concrete.

What I can't really understand is - what does torture
really achieve? Has it worked successfully in the past?
Do people really tell the truth under duress? How
accurate is the information they give. Or will they simply
say what ever you want to hear - and the actual usefulness
of the information is negligible.

Also, do the captured terrorists really know anything?
Or are they simply cogs in a large wheel. So what would
be the point of torturing people whose knowledge is
actually non-existant?

So many questions. So few answers.

I can't give you a point by point answer to what should be
done. I'm not an expert in this field.

However, there are experts - who do know about these things,
and surely there must be a system of 'profiling,' that would
provide them with alternatives to torture, in getting
the required information - or alternatively in deciding -
that there is no information to be gotten. That the captured
terrorists in actual fact, know very little.