NYT: Secret Joint Raid Captures Taliban’s Top Commander

Do you think our soldiers should be subjected to this?

 

No, if they are captured I do not want US soldiers to be tortured.

Are you telling me that you do? Kind of a bizarre-o thing to say.

 

Oh, no...I'm was saying that our military has been known to waterboard our soldiers as part of training. Do you think our soldiers should be subjected to our military waterboarding them?

 

Well, gonna try hard not to derail this but here goes...

Thank the Soviets for being the tough assholes actually. The liberal democracies of the West were relatively benign in comparison, which is why Nazis were desperately trying to defect to the West.

Now, if you're talking about "worries about offending people" as following the rule of international law, then I have a problem with your position. Is it so much to ask of one of the greatest liberal democracies the world has ever seen to not go down the path of one of the most lawless and scumbag groups in the world? You cannot fight lawlessness with more lawlessness. This is not a matter of degrees, a matter of beheading vs waterboarding. Either you are WITH the law or AGAINST it. And sadly in this case, the United States is against the law. For a country that emphasizes universality for human rights values, one cannot help but notice the weakness of America's position in this case. Is this idealistic? Yes. But so the hell what? America is (or was) a country built on ideals.

 

No I do not have a problem with people (either soliders or reporters or researchers or whatever) voluntarily subjecting themselves to actions that would ordinarily be considered illegal, provided there are no extenuating circumstances (like mental instability etc), for training/research purposes.

For example, it would be illegal (and probably wrong) for me to kick you in ribs in most circumstances, but if we entered a licensed, sanctioned Savate tournament (Savate is a french martial art, allegedly invented along the backstreets of Marseille) or exhibition, I could do so without fear of legal sanction.

not a difficult concept once again....

 

Good point.

Is it voluntary for the soldiers? Or is it that they volunteered to join the military and that just comes with the job as long as they are physically/mentally able too?

 

I assume they sign some sort of waiver when they join and probably again when they undergo specialized training/schools etc.

 

Actually no.. there are no Waivers in the military... once you enlist you belong to them and they do their thing, if you don't want to do what is required for the job you don't get the job and are either forced to do something else or seperated (commanders discretion)... In the Air Force some jobs, mainly air crew positions, require you to go through survival school. part of this survival training revolves around surviving POW scenario. this is where you might be waterboarded.. they are also allowed to do alot of other things. including hitting. The idea is to make it as realistic as possible and than teach you how to survive and overcome the situation. But no you don't sign a waiver.

 

That's a special circumstance related to your experience in the Balkan Air Force - as most of their airmen can't read they don't sign a waiver, they just make an "X" on the stone using a fistful of leftover fuel manure.

 

wow so now you are making disparaging remarks towards people who live in the Balkans.. you are classy!

 

I'm pretty sure, "they're doing it" is not an acceptable reason for us to be torturing people. If anything, that's the main reason we shouldn't be. Just like we shouldn't be killing civilians, even though they are. Those are the things that differentiate us and our supposedly just cause from them.

 

Yeah, we actually sued Japan for war crimes for waterboarding American soldiers. We didn't waterboard then and we shouldn't now. Some principles are worth jumping through hoops for, in my opinion.

 

Again, OP, even if I alone feel this way: ****ing great news for the nation and the civilized 21st century world. Hopefully more joint progress can be made with Pakistan.

 

I have stated over and over again that waterboarding is useless so I agree, why do it. I agree with Gary Bernsten (former CIA officer, highly decorated) who said they should just execute them and be done with it.

 

February 21, 2010
Mullah’s arrest is ‘own goal’ for US
Christina Lamb in Washington and Daud Khattak in Peshawar

ON the face of it the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s top strategist, as he came out of a madrasah in Karachi seemed a coup.

Jubilant American officials described it as a “game- changer, even more important than the battle in Marjah”, where 15,000 Nato and Afghan soldiers are engaged in their biggest offensive.

“A tremendous achievement for Pakistani intelligence and American collaboration,” crowed the US special representative Richard Holbrooke, in Islamabad last week for talks with Pakistani generals and President Asif Ali Zardari.

After years of handing Islamabad billions of dollars for co- operation in the war on terror, the combination of money and pressure seemed to be finally working.

Unidentified US officials quoted by The New York Times said Baradar was providing a “wealth of information”. His arrest was followed by a round-up in Quetta which netted two other senior Taliban figures, Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mir Mohammad, said to be the shadow governors of the provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan.

While this was the first time Pakistan had acted against the Taliban leadership, Afghans involved in western-backed attempts to start talks with the Taliban to end the war were furious, warning that the arrest might have ruined chances of negotiations.

“It’s a spectacular own goal [for the US],” said one official. “They want to wreck talks,” said a close aide to Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.

“Mullah Baradar was independently in contact with the Afghan government to find a way for reconciliation and the Pakistanis knew that from their secret agents.”

Baradar had participated in meetings, including one in Saudi Arabia with Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali. Other Taliban leaders are sceptical about talks, saying foreign troops must withdraw first.

“The timing of this arrest was very peculiar,” said Barmak Pazhwak, a senior official for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the United States Institute of Peace, a think tank. “The fact he was one of the key Taliban leaders advocating talks suggests the Pakistanis either want more control or to sabotage the process altogether.”

The arrest came days after Pakistan had publicly stated it needed a role in any negotiations. Pakistan has invested a lot in the Taliban, with whom it has worked for more than 20 years. Its military intelligence service, the ISI, helped them to take control of Afghanistan in the 1990s and its generals refer to the Taliban as “assets”.

“The ISI is arresting the Taliban leaders who are reconcilable,” said Idrees Khan, a human rights activist in Peshawar. “By doing this, they want to save them from being killed by those Taliban who don’t want to accept peace.”

After the arrest, US officials said Pakistan should have a place at the negotiating table. But some experts believe that Pakistan’s military has little interest in peace in Afghanistan because then they would no longer be needed by the US and the dollars would dry up.

They point out that the only previous senior Taliban figure to be arrested in Pakistan, Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, had also opened talks with Kabul.


Islamabad’s motive may be financial. Pakistan is bankrupt and the US had blocked $1.3 billion (£840m) of aid because of a dispute over a refusal to grant visas to American security officials. The first $349m tranche of this will be released next week following Baradar’s arrest.

Pakistan has received more than $12 billion in US aid since 2001, and in October the Obama administration agreed a further $7.5 billion over five years.


“I’m not sure I would read too much into this in terms of a major shift by Pakistan,” said Shuja Nawaz, an expert on the Pakistani military.

Others point to Pakistani intelligence co-operation in the recent deaths in a US missile strike in North Waziristan of Muhammad Haqqani, the 30-year-old son of Jalaluddin Haqqani and brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghan warlords with close links to Al-Qaeda.

Pakistan’s military has long-standing ties to the Haqqanis and previously resisted US pressure to act against them.

“This proves our sincerity in this fight,” said a senior ISI officer after the Haqqani killing. Others question what help they gave.

As always where Pakistan and the Taliban are concerned, the facts are murky.
One thing is clear: Pakistan can no longer claim the Taliban leadership is not in its country. The question is, if it can arrest Baradar, what about the others?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7034888.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

 

I noticed no one had answered this so I am.

The 4th Geneva convention applies to the status of civillians during wartime and occupation.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Human_Rights/geneva1.html
It states:
[rquoter]
Article 1. The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.




Art. 2. In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace-time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.
...
Art. 4. Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.
[/rquoter]
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US are all signatories to the Conventions as such conflicts on their territory and nationals of those countries the Conventions apply.

In regard to the treatment of spies and sabotuers, as Al Qaeda could be said to be the Covention makes an exception but does say this.

[rquoter]Art. 5 Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State.




Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention.




In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present< Convention at the earliest date consistent with security of State or Occupying Power
[/rquoter]

The 4th Geneva Convention clearly applies to the current Afghanistan conflict and even an argument that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not regular combatants but terrorists the Convention still mandates that they be treated humanely.

 

This is a flawed comparison in regard to the current situation for many reasons.

The first is that the nature of the conflict is very different. Nazi Germany and Japan were two of the most powerful nations at the time and while they didn't represent an existential threat to us they were to our allies and a very severe threat to us. Neither the Taliban or Al Qaeda represent that sort of threat. They are a threat but nowhere near the type of threat that the Axis was.

Two, this ignores how warfare was fought at the time. One could also make a historical argument saying that Ulysses S. Grant won the Civil War by pretty much not caring about the lives of Union soldiers in comparison to now with how we try to minimize casualties among our troops. Also if you are going to say how tough we were back in WWII to win the war we also did things like have a national draft, had rationing, and also put most of our industry in service to the war. I doubt that neither you or Pop Rox would be willing to consider those things too for our current conflict.

Also when you speak about how we did tough things to the enemy, consider that the Geneva Conventions weren't signed until 1949 after the war had ended and even then we still put Nazis and members of the Japanese Imperial military on trial for crimes against humanity. In fact Winston Churchill himself had some big misgivings about the fire bombing of Dresden.

 

You make this statement as if our soldier/citizens are subjected to waterboarding "as part of training" in bootcamp. The implication, by you, is that all "Our brave soldiers can be waterboarded" and then make the astonishing leap in "logic" that the administration's view is "but a captured terrorist that is strongly believed to have knowledge of an impending attack (and President Obama agrees this person has knowledge after a briefing) can't be waterboarded?"

Your statement is a gross exaggeration. The only US service men and women who have recieved this "training" are, "All special operations units in all branches of the U.S. military and the CIA's Special Activities Division [117] employ the use of a form of waterboarding as part of survival school (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) training, to psychologically prepare soldiers for the possibility of being captured by enemy forces." That is an entirely different kettle of fish. Those are our elite forces, often operating behind enemy lines, where the possibility of capture and brutal interogation is many times more likely that the vast majority of our people in the service.

Rather that making statements that are a gross exaggeration, why not argue based on the facts? The truth is that the officers who lead our people in the field, the units of the regular Army, the Marines, the guys out there putting their butts on the line, and their commanders higher up are against America using waterboarding, which is torture, because they don't want their men and women who may be captured subjected to it, whether it be waterboarding or some other form of torture. They prefer adhering to the Geneva Conventions, those that the Nazis' and Italians largely followed on the Western Front (just ask the thousands of American, British, and French POW's who lived to tell about their experiences after the war), and that the Japanese totally ignored, resulting in horrific treatment of our POW's in the Pacific and Asian theatres.

Our regular command people in the Army and Marines believe that we should follow those minimal standards of humane treatment of prisoners of war because they want their own men and women treated at least that well if captured by the enemy. Every instance of US use of torture undermines the structures in international law designed to insure the humane treatment of prisoners of war. Every instance. Anyone who believes torture is a benefit to the United States, with all due respect, is a god-damned fool.

 

Sishir, the Geneva Conventions date back decades before WWII.

 

Sorry my bad. I meant the 4th Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of civillians and irregular combatants.